TIME AND TIDE, 
BY WEARE AND TYNE 



V W K N T Y -Fl V E LETT E lit? 



WOIUING MAN OF SUNDERLAND 



LAWS OF WORK. 



BY 

JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., 

HONOaaSY STUDENT OP CBBIST-CirURCH, OXOS. 



ll ; ESTAELISiJED 1875. 



NEW YORK : 
JOHN WILEY & SONS, 
15 ASTOR PLACE. 
1886. 






TBANSPHR 
D. 0, PUBLIC LIBBABY 
SEPT. 10, 1940 



CONTENTS. 



PASI 

Preface . is 



Letter I. — Co-operation. 

The two kinds of Co-operation — In its highest sense it is not yet 

thought of 1 

Letter II. — Contentment. 
Co-operation, as hitherto understood, is perhaps not expedient 6 

Letter III.— Legislation. 
Of true Legislation. That every Man may be a Law to himself. . . 12 

Letter IV. — Expenditure. 
The Expenses for Art and for War 18 

Letier V. — Entertainment. 

The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — (Covent Garden Pan- 
tomime.) 22 

Letter VI. — Dexterity. 
The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — (The Japanese Jugglers.). . . 29 

Letier VII. — Festivity. 
Of titfc various Expressions of National Festivity «....., 88 



IV CONTENTS. 

Letter VIII. — Things Written 

PIGS 

The Four possible Theories respecting the Authority of the Bible . . 37 
Letter IX. — Thanksgiving. 

The Use of Music and Dancing under the Jewish Theocracy, 

compared with their Use by the Modem French 44 

Letter X. — Wheat-Sifting. 

The Meaning, and actual Operation, of Satanic or Demoniacal 

Influence 04 

Letter XL — The Golden Bough. 

The Satanic Power is mainly Twofold : the Power of causing False- 
hood and the Power of causing Pain. The Resistance is by 
Law of Honour and Law of Delight 64 

Letter XII. — Dictatorship. 
ILe Necessity of Imperative Law to the Prosperity of States 6 q 

Letter XIII. — Episcopacy and Dukedom. 

The proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke ; or, " Overseer" and 
' 4 Leader " 76 

Letter XIV. — Trade- Warrant. 

The First Group of Essential Laws. — Against Theft by False Work 

and by Bankruptcy. — Necessary Publicity of Accounts 85 

Letter XV. — Per-centage. 

The Nature of Theft by Unjust Profits. — Crime can finally be 
arrested only by Education 91 



CONTENTS. ? 

Letter XYI. — Education. 

PAGB 

Of Public Education irrespective of Class-distinction. It consists 

essentially in giving Habits of Mercy, and Habits of Truth. . . 09 

Letter XVII. — Difficulties. 

The Relations of Education to Position in Life 110 

Letter XVIII. — Humility. 

The harmful Effects of Servile Employments. The possible 
Practice and Exhibition of sincere Humility by Religious 
Persons 115 

Letter XIX. — Broken Reeds. 

The General Pressure of Excessive and Improper Work, in English 
Life 122 

Letter XX. — Rose-Gardens. 

Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Classes ; and of the 
advisable Restrictions of it 131 

Letter XXI. — Gentillesse. 

Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts ; and of the Proper System 

of Retail Trade 140 

Letter XXII. — The Master. 

Of the normal Position and Duties of the Upper Classes. General 

Statement of the Land Question 148 

Letter XXIII. — Landmarks. 

Of the Just Tenure of Lands ; and the proper Functions of high 

Public Officers 151 



VI CONTENTS. 

Lettek XXIY. — The Rod and Honeycomb. 

pa«m 

The Office of the Soldier 170 

Letter XXV. — Hyssop. 

Of inevitable Distinction of Rank, and necessary Submission to 

Authority. The Meaning of Pure-heartedness. Conclusion. . 182 



» ♦ » 



APPENDICES. 

Appendix 1. 

PAOB 

Expenditure on Science and Art 196 

Appendix 2. 
Legislation of Frederick the Great 197 

Appendix 3. 
Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth 200 

Appendix 4. 

Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime 201 

Appendix 5. 
Abuse of Food 208 

Appendix 6. 

Law of Property 204 

Appendix 7. 
Ambition of Bishops 205 



contents. vii 

Appendix 8. 

PlttH 

Regulations of Trade 200 

Appendix 9. 
Greatness Coal-begotten SOS 

Appendix 10. 
Letter to the Editor of the PaU Mall Gazette 80$ 



PREFACE. 



The following letters were written to Mr. Thoitas 
Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, during the 
agitation for reform in the spring of the present year. 
They contain, in the plainest terms I could use, the sub- 
stance of what I then desired to say to our English work- 
men, which was briefly this : — " The reform you desire 
may give you more influence in Parliament; but your 
influence there will of course be useless to you, — perhaps 
worse than useless, — until you have w r isely made up your 
minds as to what you wish Parliament to do for you ; and 
when you have made up your minds about that, you will 
find, not only that you can do it for yourselves, without 
the intervention of Parliament ; but that eventually no- 
body but yourselves can do it. And to help you, as far 
as one of your old friends may, in so making up your 
minds, such and such tilings are what it seems to me you 
should ask for, and, moreover, strive for, with your heart 
and might." 

The letters now published relate only to one division 
of the laws which I desired to recommend to the con- 
sideration of our operatives, — those, namely, bearing upon 
honesty of work, and honesty of exchange. I hope in 
the course of next year that I may be able to complete 



X PREFACE. 

the second part of the series, which vill relate to the 
possible comforts and wholesome laws of familiar house- 
hold life, and the share which a labouring nation maj 
attain in the skill, and the treasures, of the higher arts. 
The letters are republished as they were written, with 
here and there correction of a phrase, and omission of one 
or two passages of merely personal or temporary interest ; 
the headings only are added, in order to give the reader 
some clue to the general aim of necessarily desultory dis- 
cussion ; and the portions of Mr. Dixon^s letters in reply, 
referred to in the text, are added in the Appendix ; an^ 
will be found well deserving of attention. 

Desil&bk Hill, Decemb&r 14. 18£7. 



TIME AND TIDE, 
BY WEARE AND TYNE. 



fetter 1. 

The two hinds of Co-operation. — In its highest sense %t u 
not yet thought of. 

Denmark Hill, February 4, 1867. 

My dear Friend — You have now everything I have 
yet published on political economy ; but there are several 
points in these books of mine which I intended to add 
notes to, and it seems little likely I shall get that soon 
done. So I think the best way of making up for the 
want of these is to write you a few simple letters, which 
you can read to other people, or send to be printed, if 
you like, in any of your journals where you think they 
may be useful. 

I especially want you, for one thing, to understaud the 
sense in which the word "co-operation" is used in my 

books. You will find I am always pleading for it ; and 

1 



TIME AND TIDE. 



yet I don't at all mean the co-operation of partnership (as 
opposed to the system of wages) which is now so gradu- 
ally extending itself among our great firms. I am glad 
to see it doing so, yet not altogether glad; for none of 
you who are engaged in the immediate struggle between 
the system of co-operation and the system of mastership 
know how much the dispute involves ; and none of us 
know the results to which it may finally lead. For the 
alternative is not, in reality, only between two modes of 
conducting business — it is between two different states of 
society. It is not the question whether an amount of 
wages, no greater in the end than that at present 
received by the men, may be paid to them in a way 
which shall give them share in the risks, and interest in 
the prosperity of the business. The question is, really, 
whether the profits which are at present taken, as his 
own right, by the person whose capital, or energy, or 
ingenuity, has made him head of the firm, are not in 
some proportion to be divided among the subordinates 
of it. 

I do not wish, for the moment, to enter into any 
inquiry as to the just claims, of capital, or as to the pro- 
portions in which profits ought to be, or are in actually 
existing firms, divided. I merely take the one assured 
and essential condition that a somewhat larger income 



LETTER I. CO-OPERATION. 3 

will be in co-operative firms secured to the subordinates, 
by the diminution of the income of the chief. And the 
general tendency of such a system is to increase the 
facilities of advancement among the subordinates; to 
stimulate their ambition; to enable them to lay by, if 
they are provident, more ample and more early provision 
for declining years ; and to form in the end a vast class 
of persons wholly different from the existing operative — • 
members of society, possessing each a moderate com- 
petence ; able to procure, therefore, not indeed many of 
the luxuries, but all the comforts of life ; and to devote 
some leisure to the attainments of liberal education, and 
to the other objects of free life. On the other hand, by 
the exact sum which is divided among them, more than 
their present wages, the fortune of the man who, under 
the present system, takes all the profits of the business, 
will be diminished ; and the acquirement of large private 
fortune by regular means, and all the conditions of life 
belonging to such fortune, will be rendered impossible in 
the mercantile community. 

Now, the magnitude of the social change hereby in- 
volved, and the consequent differences in the moral 
relations between individuals, have not as yet been 
thought of, — much less estimated, — by any of your 
writers on commercial subjects; and it is because I do 



4 TIME AND TIDE. 

not jet feel able to grapple with them that I have left 
untouched, in the books I send yon, the question of co- 
operative labour. When I use the word " co-operation," 
it is not meant to refer to these new constitutions of 
firms at all. I use the word in a far wider sense, as 
opposed, not to masterhood, but to competition. I do 
not mean for instance, by co-operation, that all the master 
bakers in a town are to give a share of their profits to 
the men who go out with the bread; but that the masters 
are not to try to undersell each other, nor seek each to 
get the other's business, but are all to form one society, 
selling to the public under a common law of severe 
penalty for unjust dealing, and at an established price. 
I do not mean that all bankers' clerks should be partners 
in the bank; but I do mean that all bankers should be 
members of a great national body, answerable as a society 
for all deposits ; and that the private business of specu- 
lating with other people's money should take another 
.name than that of "banking." And, for final instance, 
I mean by " co-operation " not only fellowships between 
trading firms, but between trading nations; so that 
it shall no more be thought (as it is now, with ludicrous 
and vain selfishness) an advantage for one nation to 
undersell another, and take its occupation away from 
it ; but that the primal and eternal law of vital com- 



LETTER I. — CO-OPERATION. 5 

meree shall be of all men understood— namely, that 
every nation is fitted by its character, and the nature 
of its territories, for some particular employments or 
manufactures; and that it is the true interest of every 
other nation to encourage it in such specialty, and by 
no means to interfere with, but in all ways forward 
and protect its efforts, ceasing all rivalship with it, so 
soon as it is strong enough to occupy its proper place. 
Tou see, therefore, that the idea of co-operation, in the 
sense in which I employ it, has hardly yet entered into 
the minds of political inquirers ; and I will not pursue 
it at present; but return to that system which is be- 
ginning to obtain credence and practice among us. This 
however, must be in a following letter. 



Cetter 2. 

Co-operation, as hitherto understood, is per) ops not ex- 
pedient 

February 4. 1867. 

Limiting the inquiry, then, for the present, as proposed 
in the close of my last letter, to the form of co-operation 
which is now upon its trial in practice, I would beg of you 
to observe that the points at issue, in the comparison of 
this system with that of mastership, are by no means hith- 
erto frankly stated ; still less can they as yet be fairly 
brought to test. For all mastership is not alike in princi- 
ple ; there are just and unjust masterships ; and while, on 
the one hand, there can be no question but that co-opera- 
tion is better than unjust and tyrannous mastership, there 
is very great room for doubt whether it be better than a 
just and benignant mastership. 

At present you — every one of you — speak, and act, as 
if there were only one alternative ; namely, between a 
system in which profits shall be divided in due proportion 
among all ; and the present one, in which the workman is 
paid the least was;es he will take, under the pressure oi 



LETTER n. CONTENTMENT. 7 

competition in the labour-market. But an intermediate 
method is conceivable ; a method which appears to be more 
prudent, and in its ultimate results more just, than the 
co-operative one. An arrangement may be supposed, and 
1 have good hope also may one day be effected, by which 
every subordinate shall be paid sufficient and regular wa- 
ges, according to his rank ; by which due provision shall 
be made out of the profits of the business for sick and su- 
perannuated workers ; and by which the master, being 
held responsible, as a minor king or governor, for the con- 
duct as well as the comfort of all those under his rule^ 
shall, on that condition, bepermitted to retain to his own 
use the surplus profits of the business, which the fact of his 
being its master may be assumed to prove that he has or- 
ganized by superior intellect and energy. And I tl ink 
this principle of regular wage-paying, whether it be in the 
abstract more just, or not, is at all events the more prud jnt'; 
for this reason mainly, that in spite of all the cant which 
is continually talked by cruel, foolish, or designing persons 
about " the duty of remaining content in the position in 
which Providence has placed you," there is a root of the 
very deepest and holiest truth in the saying, which gives 
tD it such power as it still retains, even uttered by unkind 
and unwise lips, and received into doubtful and embittered 
hearts. 



8 TIME ASTD TIDE. 

If, indeed, no effort be made to discover, in the course 
of their early training, for what services the youths of a 
nation are individually qualified; nor any care taken to 
place those who have unquestionably proved their fitnesa 
for certain functions, in the offices they could best fulfil, — 
then, to call the confused wreck of social order and life 
brought about by malicious collision and competition an 
arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the most inso- 
lent and wicked ways in which it is poosible to take the 
name of God in vain. But if, at the proper time, some 
earnest effort be made to place youths, according to their 
capacities, in the occupations for which they are fitted, I 
think the system of organization will be finally found the 
best, which gives the least encouragement to thoughts of 
any great future advance in social life. 

The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to 
the strength and happiness of men, does not consist in the 
anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place or rank, but 
in gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplishing 
the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which cir- 
cumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the 
object of a workman's ambition should not be to become 
a master ; but to attain daily more subtle and exemplary 
skill in his own craft, to save from his wages enough to 
enrich and complete his home gradually with more deli- 



LETTER II. CONTENTMENT. 9 

cate and substantial comforts ; and to lay by sucli store as 
shall be sufficient for the happy maintenance of his old 
age (rendering him independent of the help provided for 
the sick and indigent by the arrangement pre-supposed), 
and sufficient also for the starting of his children in a rank 
of life equal to his own. If his wages are not enough 
to enable him to do this, they are unjustly low ; if they 
are once raised to this adequate standard, I do not think 
that by the possible increase of his gains under contin- 
gencies of trade, or by divisions of profits with his mas- 
ter, he should be enticed into feverish hope of an entire 
change of condition ; and as an almost necessary conse- 
quence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with im- 
mediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily 
life, for which no subsequent success could indemnify him. 
And I am the more confident in this belief, because, even 
supposing a gradual rise in sociable rank possible for all 
well-conducted persons, my experience does not lead me to 
think the elevation itself, when attained, would be con- 
ducive to their happiness. 

The grounds of this opinion I will give you in a 
future letter ; in the present one, I must pass to a more 
important point, namely, that if this stability of cor 
dition be indeed desirable for those in whom existing 
circumstances might seem to justify discontent, much 



10 TIME AND TIDE. 

more must it be good and desirable for those wno al- 
ready possess everything which can be conceived ne- 
cessary to happiness. It is the merest insolence of 
selfishness to preach contentment to a labourer who 
gets thirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active 
and plotting covetousness to be meritorious in a man 
who has three thousand a year. In this, as in all other 
points of mental discipline, it is the duty of the upper 
classes to set an example to the lower; and to recom- 
mend and justify the restraint of the ambition of their 
inferiors, chiefly by severe and timely limitation of their 
own. And, without at present inquiring into the greater 
or less convenience of the possible methods of accom- 
plishing such an object (every detail in suggestions of 
this kind necessarily furnishing separate matter of dis- 
pute), I will merely state my long fixed conviction, that 
one of the most important conditions of a healthful system 
of social economy, would be the restraint of the prop- 
erties and incomes of the upper classes within certain 
fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy iv 
the accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another 
and a higher ideal of the duties of advanced life would 
be necessarily created in the national mind ; by with- 
drawal of those who had attained the prescribed limits 
of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly 



LETTER II. CONTENTMENT. 11 

success, and earlier marriage, with all its beneficent 
moral results, would become possible to the young ; 
while the older men of active intellect, whose sagacity 
is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own 
meanest interests, would be induced unselfishly to occupy 
themselves in the superintendence of public institutions, 
or furtherance of public advantage. 

And out of this class it would be found natural and 
prudent always to choose the members of the legislative 
body of the Commons ; and to attach to the order 
also some peculiar honors, in the possession of which 
such complacency would be felt as would more than 
replace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed 
richer than others, which to many men is the principal 
charm of their wealth. And although no law of this 
purport would ever be imposed on themselves by the 
actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being 
gradually brought into force from beneath, without 
any violent or impatient proceedings; and this I will 
endeavour to show in my next letter. 



Cetter 3. 

Of True Legislation. That every Man may be a Law 

to himself. 

February 17, 1867. 
No, I have not been much worse in health ; "but I 
was asked by a friend to look over some work in which 
you will all be deeply interested one day, so that I 
could not write again till now. I was the more sorry, 
because there were several things I wished to note 
in your last letter; one especially leads me directly to 
what I in any case was desirous of urging upon you. 
You say, "In vol. 6th of Frederick the Great I find 
a great deal that I feel quite certain, if our Queen or 
Government could make law, thousands of our English 
workmen would hail with a shout of joy and gladness," 
1 do not remember to what you especially allude, but 
whatever the rules you speak of may be, unless there 
be anything in them contrary to the rights of present 
English property, why should you care whether the 
Government makes them law or not? Can vou ] ->t. 



LETTER in. LEGISLATION. 13 

you thousands of English workmen, simply make them 
a law to yourselves, by practising them? 

It is now some five or six years since I first had occa 
si on to speak to the members of the London Working 
Men's College on the subject of Reform, and the sub- 
stance of what I said to them was this : " You *are all 
agape, my friends, for this mighty privilege of having 
your opinions represented in Parliament. The concession 
might be desirable, — at all events courteous, — if only it 
were quite certain you had got any opinions to represent. 
But have you ? Are you agreed on any single thing you 
systematically want ? Less work and more wages, of 
course ; but how much lessening of work do you suppose 
is possible ? Do you think the time will ever come for 
everybody to have no work and all wages ? Or have you 
yet taken the trouble so much as to think out the nature 
of the true connection between wages and work, and to 
determine, even approximately, the real quantity of the 
one, that can, according to the laws of God and nature, 
be given for the other ; for, rely on it, make what laws 
you like, that quantity only can you at last get? 

" Do you know how many mouths can be fed on an 
acre of land, or how fast those mouths multiply; and 
have you considered what is to be done finally with un- 
ieedable mouths? i Send them to be fed elsewhere,' dc 



14 TIME AND TIDE. 

you say? Have you, then, formed any < pinion as to the 
time at which emigration should begin, or the countries 
to which it should preferably take place, or the kind of 
population which should be left at home? Have you 
planned the permanent state which you would wish Eng- 
land to hold, emigrating over her edges, like a full well, 
constantly ? How full would you have her be of people, 
first; and of what sort of people? Do you want her to 
be nothing but a large workshop and forge, so that the 
name of £ Englishman ' shall be synonymous with ' iron- 
monger,' all over the world ; or would you like to keep 
some of your lords and landed gentry still, and a few 
green fields and trees ? 

" You know well enough that there is not one of these 
questions, I do not say which you can answer, but which 
you have ever thought of answering ; and yet you want to 
have voices in Parliament ! Tour voices are not worth a 
rat's squeak, either in Parliament or out of it, till you 
have some ideas to utter with them ; and when you have 
the thoughts, you will not want to utter them, for you 
will see that your way to the fulfilling of them does not 
ie through speech. Ton think such matters need debat- 
ing about ? By all means debate about them ; but debate 
among yourselves, and with such honest helpers of your 
thoughts as you can find. If that way you cannot get at 



LETTER m. LEGISLATION. 15 

the truth, do you suppose you could get at it sooner in 
the House of Commons, where the only aim of many of 
the members would be to refute every word uttered in 
your favor and where the settlement of any question 
whatever depends merely on the perturbations of the 
balance of conflicting interests ? " 

That was, in main particulars, what I then said to the 
men of^the Working Men's College; and in this recur- 
rent agitation about Reform, that is what I would stead- 
fastly say again. Do you think it is only under the 
lacquered splendours of Westminster, — you working men 
of England, — that your affairs can be rationally talked 
over ? You have perfect liberty and power to talk over, 
and establish for yourselves, whatever laws you please, 
so long as you do not interfere with other people's liber- 
ties or properties. Elect a parliament of your own. 
Choose the best men among you, the best at least you 
can find, by whatever system of election you think like- 
liest to secure such desirable result. Invite trustworthy 
persons of other classes to join your council ; appoint 
time and place for its stated sittings, and let this par- 
liament, chosen after your own hearts, deliberate upon 
the possible modes of the regulation of industry, and 
advisablest schemes for helpful discipline of life ; and so 
lay before you the best laws they can devise, which such 



16 TIME AND TIDE. 

of you as were wise might submit to, and teach their 
children to obey. And if any of the laws thus deter- 
mined appeared to be inconsistent with the present ch 
cumstances or customs of trade, do not make a noise 
about them, nor try to enforce them suddenly on others, 
nor embroider them on flags, nor call meetings in parks 
about them, in spite of railings and police; but keep 
them in your thoughts and sight, as objects of patient 
purpose, and future achievement by peaceful strength. 

For you need not think that even if you obtained a 
majority of representatives in the existing parliament, 
you could immediately compel any system of business, 
broadly contrary to that now established by custom. If 
you could pass laws to-morrow, wholly favourable to 
yourselves, as you might think, because unfavourable to 
your masters, and to the upper classes of society, — the 
only result would be, that the riches of the country would 
at once leave it, and you would perish in riot and famine. , 
Be assured that no great change for the better can ever 
be easily accomplished, nor quickly ; nor by impulsive, 
ill- regulated effort, nor by bad men ; nor even by good 
men, without much suffering. The suffering must, in- 
deed, come, one way or another, in all greatly critical 
periods ; the only question, for us, is whether we will 
reach our ends (if we ever reach them) through a chain 



LETTER in. LEGISLATION. 17 

of involuntary miseries, many of them useless, and all 
ignoble ; or whether we will know the worst at once, and 
deal with it by the wisely sharp methods of God-sped 
courage. 

This, I repeat to you, it is wholly in your own power 
to do, but it is in your power on one condition only, that 
of steadfast truth to yourselves, and to all men. If there 
is not, in the sum of it, honesty enough among you to 
teach you to frame, and strengthen you to obey, just 
laws of trade, there is no hope left for you. No political 
constitution can ennoble knaves ; no privileges can assist 
them ; no possessions enrich them. Their gains are 
occult curses ; comfortless loss their truest blessing ; 
failure and pain Nature's only mercy to them. Look to 
it, therefore, first, that you get some wholesome honesty 
for the foundation of all things. Without the resolution 
in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right 
hands have motion in them; and to do it whether the 
issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the name will 
ever be possible to you, while, in once forming the resolu- 
tion that your work is to be well done, life is really won, 
here and for ever. And to make your children capable 
of such resolution, is the beginning of all true education, 
oi which I have more to say in a future letter. 



Cctter &. 

The Expenses for Art and for War. 

February 19, 1867. 
In the Pall Mall Gazette of yesterday, second column 
of second page, yon will find, close to each other, two 
sentences which bear closely on matters in hand. The 
first of these is the statement, that in the debate on the 
grant for the Blacas collection, " Mr. Bernal Osborne got 
an assenting cheer, when he said that ' whenever science 
and art were mentioned it was a sign to look after the 
national pockets.' " I want you to notice this fact, i. e. 
(the debate in question being on a total grant of 164,000Z. 
of which 48,000^. only were truly for art's sake, and the 
rest for shop's sake), in illustration of a passage in my 
Sesame and Lilies, pp. 81 and 82,* to which I shall have 
again to refer you, with some further comments, in the 
sequel of these letters. The second passage is to the effect 
that " The Trades' Union Bill was read a second time, after 
a claim from Mr. Hadfield, Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Sam 
uelson, to admit working men into the commission; to 

* Appendix 1. 



LETTER IV. EXPEJSTDITTIRE. 19 

which Mr. Watkins answered 'that the working men's 
friend was too conspicuous in the body ; ' and Mr. Roe 
buck, c that when a butcher was tried for murder it wae 
not necessary to have butchers on the jury.' " 

Note this second passage with respect to what I said iu 
my last letter, as to the impossibility of the laws of work 
being investigated in the House of Commons. What 
admixture of elements, think you, would avail to obtain 
so much as decent hearing (how should we then speak of 
impartial judgment?) of the cause of working men, in an 
assembly which permits to one of its principal members 
this insolent discourtesy of language, in dealing with a 
preliminary question of the highest importance ; and per- 
mits it as so far expressive of the whole colour and tone of 
its own thoughts, that the sentence is quoted by one of 
the most temperate and accurate of our daily journals, as 
representing the total answer of the opposite side in 
the debate ? No ; be assured you can do nothing yet at 
Westminster. You must have your own parliament, and 
if you cannot detect enough honesty among you to con- 
stitute a justly-minded one, for the present matters must 
take their course, and that will be, yet awhile, to the 
worse. 

I meant to have continued this subject, but I see two 
other statements in the Pall Mall Gazette of to-day, with 



20 TIME AND TIDE. 

which, and a single remark upon them, I think it will be 
well to close my present letter. 

1. "The total sum asked for in the army estimates 5 
published this morning, is 14,752,2002., being an increase 
of 412,0002. over the previous year." 

2. " Yesterday the annual account of the navy receipts 
and expenditure for the year ending 31st March, 1866, 
was issued from the Admiralty. The expenditure was 
10,268,2152. 7s." 

Omitting the seven shillings, and even the odd hun- 
dred thousands of pounds, the net annual expendi- 
ture for army and navy appears to be twenty-four 
millions. 

The "grant in science and art," two-thirds of which 
was not in reality for either, but for amusement and shop 
interests in the Paris Exhibition — the grant which the 
House of Commons feels to be indicative of general dan- 
ger to the national pockets — is, as above stated, 164,0002. 
Now, I believe the three additional ciphers which turn 
thousands into millions produce on the intelligent English 
mind usually, the effect of — three ciphers. But calculate 
the proportion of these two sums, and then imagine to 
yourself the beautiful state of rationality of any private 
gentleman, who, having regretfully spent 1642. on pic- 
tures for his walls, paid willingly 24,0002. annually to the 



LETTER IV. EXPENDITURE. 21 

policemen who looked after liis shutters ! Ton practical 
English ! — will you ever unbar the shutters of your 
brains, and hang a picture or two in those state cham- 
bers? 



fetter 3. 

The Corruption of Modem Pleasure. — {Covent Garden 
Pantomime.) 

February 25, 186?. 

There is this great advantage in the writing real let- 
ters, that the direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for 
sajmg, in or out of order, everything that the chances of 
the day bring into one's head, in connection with the 
matter in. hand; and as such things very usually go out 
of one's head again, after they get tired of their lodging, 
they would otherwise never get said at all. And thus 
to-day, quite out of order, but in very close connection 
with another part of our subject, I am going to tell yon 
what I was thinking on Friday evening last, in Covent 
Garden Theatre, as I was looking, and not laughing, at 
the pantomime of All Bala and the Forty Thieves. 

When you begin seriously to consider the question re- 
ferred to in my second letter, of the essential, and in the 
outcome inviolable, connection between quantity of wages, 
and quantity of work, you will see that " wages" in the 



LETTER T. ENTERTAINMENI . 23 

full sense don't mean "pay' merely, but the reward, 
whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of 
various other advantages, which a man is meant by 
Providence to get during life, for work well done. Even 
limiting the idea to " pay," the question is not so much 
what quantity of coin you get, as — what you can get for 
.t when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good 
pay or not, depends wholly on what a " shilling's worth " 
is ; that is to say, what quantity of the things you want 
may be had for a shilling. And that again depends on 
what you do want ; and a great deal more than that de- 
pends, besides, on " what you want." If you want only 
drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay may be enough 
for you ; if you want good meat and good clothes, you 
most have larger wage; if clean rooms and fresh air, 
larger still, and so on. You say, perhaps, " every one 
wants better things." So far from that, a wholesome 
taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of the final at- 
tainments of humanity. There are now not many Euro- 
pean gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a 
pure and right love of fresh air. They would put the 
filth of tobacco even into the first breeze of a May 
morning. 

But there are better things even than these, which one 
may want. Grant, that one has good food, clothes, lodg 



24 TIME AND TIDE. 

ing, and breathing, is that all the pay one ought to have 
for one's work? Wholesome means of existence, and 
nothing more ? Enough, perhaps, you think, if every- 
body could get these. It may be so ; I will not, at this 
moment, dispute it ; nevertheless, I will boldly say that 
you should sometimes want more than these ; and for one 
of many things more, you should want occasionally to be 
amused ! 

You know the upper classes, most of them, want to be 
amused all day long. They think 

" One moment tmamused a misery 
Not made for feeble men." 

Perhaps you have been in the habit of despising them 
for this ; and thinking how much worthier and nobler it 
was to work all day, and care at night only for food and 
rest, than to do no useful thing all day, eat unearned 
food, and spend the evening as the morning, in " change 
of follies and relays of joy." No, my good friend, that is 
one of the fatallest deceptions. It is not a noble thing, 
in sum and issue of it, not to care to be amused. It is 
indeed a far higher moral state, but it is a much lower 
creature state than that of the upper classes. 

Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the 
railroad siding, who drags the detached rear of the train 



LETTER V. ENTERTAINMENT. 25 

to the front again, and slips aside so deftly as the buffers 
meet; and, within eighteen inches of death every ten 
minutes, fulfils his dexterous and changeless duty all daj 
long, content for eternal reward with his night's rest, and 
his champed mouthful of hay ; — anything more earnestly 
moral and beautiful one cannot imagine — I never see the 
creature without a kind of worship. And yonder musi- 
cian, who used the greatest power which (in the art he 
knew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the 
clay of this world ; — who used it, I say, to follow and fit 
with perfect sound the words of the Zauberfiote and of 
Don Giovanni — basest and most monstrous of conceivable 
human words and subjects of thought — for the future 
" amusement " of his race ! — No such spectacle of uncon- 
scious (and in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) 
moral degradation of the highest faculty to the lowest 
purpose can be found in history. That Mozart is never- 
theless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding; 
nor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker 
that he, and all his frivolous audiences, should evade the 
degradation of the profitless piping, only by living, like 
horses, in daily physical labour for daily bread. 

There are three things to which man is born* — labour, 

* I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to this paragraph, on which 
much of what else I have to say depends. 



26 TIME AND TIDE. 

and sorrow, and joy. Each of these three things has its 
baseness and its nobleness. There is base labour, and 
noble labour. There is base sorrow, and noble sorrow. 
There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must net 
think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing 
without the things themselves. Nor can any life be right 
that has not all three. Labour without joy is base. 
Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour 
is base. Joy without labour is base. 

I dare say you think I am a long time in coming to 
the pantomime; I am not ready to come to it yet in 
due course, for we ought to go and see the Japanese 
jugglers first, in order to let me fully explain to you 
what I mean. But I can't write much more to-day: 
so I shall merely tell you what part of the play set 
me thinking of all this, and leave you to consider of 
it yourself, till I can send you another letter. The pan- 
tomime was, as I said, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. 
The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had 
forty companions, who were girls. The forty thieves 
and their forty companions were in some way mixed 
up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who 
were girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat- 

-o, in which the Oxford and Cambridge men were 
girls. There was a transformation scene, with % forest, 



LETTER V. ENTERTAINMENT. 27 

hi which the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in 
which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow, which 
was all of girls. 

Mingled incongruously with these seraphic, and, as 
far as my boyish experience extends, novel, elements 
of pantomime, there were yet some of its old and fast- 
expiring elements. There were, in speciality, two 
thoroughly good pantomime actors — Mr. W. H. Payne 
and Mr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was 
done admirably. There were two subordinate actors, 
who played subordinately well, the fore and hind legs 
of a donkey. And there was a little actress, of whom 
I have chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the 
little part she had to play. The scene in which she 
appeared was the only one in the whole pantomime 
in which there was any dramatic effort, or, with a few 
rare exceptions, any dramatic possibility. It was the 
home scene, in which Ali Baba's wife, on washing day, 
is called upon by butcher, baker, and milkman, with 
unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her distress 
hears her husband's knock at the door, and opens it 
for him to drive in his donkey, laden with gold. The 
children, who have been beaten instead of getting 
breakfast, presently share in the raptures of their 
father and mother; and the little lady I spoke of — 



28 TIME AND TIDE. 

eight or nine years old— -dances a ]?as-de-deux with the 
donkey. 

She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought 
to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was 
no evidence, in the finish or strength of her motion, 
that she had been put to continual torture through 
half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more 
than any child, well taught, but painlessly, might easily 
do. She caricatured no older person, — attempted no 
curious or fantastic skill. She was dressed decently, — 
she moved decently, — she looked and behaved innocently, 
— and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace, 
spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through 
all the vast theatre, full of English fathers and mothers 
and children, there was not one hand lifted to give 
her sign of praise but mine. 

Presently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, as 
I told you, were girls ; and, there being no thieving to be 
presently done, and time hanging heavy on their hands, 
arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls proceeded to light 
forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a 
round of applause. Whereupon I fell a-thinking; and 
saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and dis- 
turbing dream. 



Cetter 6. 

The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — {The Japcmese 

Jugglers?) 

February 28, 1867. 

I have jour pleasant letter with references to Fred- 
erick. I will look at them carefully.* Mr. Carlyle him- 
self will be pleased to hear this letter when he comes 
home. I heard from him last week at Mentone. He is 
well, and glad of the light and calm of Italy. I must 
get back to the evil light, and uncalm, of the places I 
was taking you through. 

(Parenthetically, did you see the article in The Times 
of yesterday on bribery, and the conclusion of the com- 
mission — " No one sold any opinions, for no one had any 
opinions to sell.") 

Both on Thursday and Friday last I had been tor 
mented by many things, and wanted to disturb n y course 
of thought any way I could. I have told yc u what en- 
tertainment I got on Friday, first, for it was then that I 

* Appendix 2. 



30 TIME AND TIDE. 

began meditating over these letters ; let me tell you now 
what entertainment I found on Thursday. 

You may have heard that a company of Japanese jug- 
glers has come over to exhibit in London. There has 
long been an increasing interest in Japanese art, which 
has been very harmful to many of our own painters, and 
I greatly desired to see what these people were, and what 
they did. Well, I have seen Blondin, and various Eng- 
lish and French circus work, but never yet anything that 
surprised me so much as one of these men's exercises on 
a suspended pole. Its special character was a close ap- 
proximation to the action and power of the monkey, even 
to the prehensile power in the foot ; so that I asked a 
sculptor-friend who sat in front of me, whether he 
thought such a grasp could be acquired by practice, or 
indicated difference in race. He said he thought it might 
be got by practice. There was also much inconceivably 
dexterous work in spinning of tops — making them pass 
in balanced motion along the edge of a sword, and along 
a level string, and the like ; — the father performing in the 
presence of his two children, who encouraged him con- 
tinually with short, sharp cries, like those of animals. 
Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand juggling 
of little interest; ending with a dance by the juggler, 
first as an animal, and then as a goblin. Now, there was 



LETTKR VI. DEX1ERITY. 31 

this great difference between the Japanese masks used in 
this dance and our common pantomime masks for beasts 
and demons, — that our English masks are only stupidly 
and loathsomely ugly, by exaggeration of feature, or of 
defect of feature. But the Japanese masks (like the fre- 
quent monsters of Japanese art) were inventively fright- 
ful, like fearful dreams ; and whatever power it is that 
acts on human minds, enabling them to invent such, ap- 
pears to me not only to deserve the term " demoniacal," 
as the only word expressive of its character ; but to be 
logically capable of no other definition. 

The impression, therefore, " produced upon me by the 
whole scene, was that of being in the presence of human 
creatures of a partially inferior race, but not without 
great human gentleness, domestic affection, and ingenious 
intellect ; who were, nevertheless, as a nation, afflicted by 
an evil spirit, and driven by it to recreate themselves in 
achieving, or beholding the achievement, through years 
of patience, of a certain correspondence with the nature 
of the lower animals. 

These, then, were the two forms of diversion or recrea- 
tion of my mind possible to me, in two days when I 
needed such help, in this metropolis of England. I 
might, as a rich man, have had better music, if I had so 
chosen, though, even so, not rational or helpful ; but a 



32 TIME AND TIDE. 

poor man could only have these, or worse than these, if 
he cared for any manner of spectacle. (I am not at pres- 
ent, observe, speaking of pure acting, which is a study, 
and recreative only as a noble book is ; but of means of 
mere amusement.) 

Now, lastly, in illustration of the effect of these and 
other such " amusements," and of the desire to obtain 
them, on the minds of our youth, read The Times corre- 
spondent's letter from Paris, in the tenth page of the 
paper, to-day ; * and that will be quite enough for you to 
read, for the present, I believe. 

* Appendix 3. 



Cetter 7. 

Of the various Expressions of National Festivity. 

March 4, 1867. 

The subject which I want to bring before you is now 
branched, and, worse than branched, reticulated, in so 
many directions, that I hardly know which shoot of it to 
trace, or which knot to lay hold of first. 

I had intended to return to those Japanese jugglers, 
after a visit to a theatre in Paris; but I had better, 
perhaps, at once tell you the piece of the performance 
which, in connection with the scene in the English panto 
mine, bears most on matters in hand. 

It was also a dance by a little girl — though one older 
than Ali Baba's daughter (I suppose a girl of twelve or 
fourteen). A dance, so-called, which consisted only in a 
series of short, sharp contractions and jerks of the body 
and limbs, resulting in attitudes of distorted and quaint 
ugliness, such as might be produced in a puppet by sharp 
twitching of strings at its joints ; these movements being 
made to the sound of two instruments, which between 
them accomplished only a quick vibratory beating and 



34 TIME AND TIDE. 

strumming, in nearly the time of a hearth-cricket's song, 
but much harsher, and of course louder, and without any 
sweetness ; only in the monotony and unintended aimless 
construction of it, reminding one of various other insect 
and reptile cries or warnings ; partly of the cicala's hiss ; 
partly of the little melancholy German frog which says 
" Mu, mil, mu," all summer-day long, with its nose out of 
the pools by Dresden and Leipsic ; and partly of the 
deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the 
alarm of the rattlesnake. 

While this was going on, there was a Bible text repeat- 
ing itself over and over again in my head, whether I 
would or no : — " And Miriam the prophetess, the sister 
of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women 
went out after her with timbrels and with dances." To 
which text and some others, I shall ask your attention 
presently ; but I must go to Paris first. 

Not at once, however, to the theatre, but to a book- 
seller's shop, No. 4, Rue Yoltaire, where, in the year 
1858, was published the fifth edition of Balzac's Contes 
Drolaliqxies, illustrated by 425 designs by Gustavo 
Dore. 

Both text and illustrations are as powerful as it is ever 
in the nature of evil things to be — (there is no final 
strength but in rightness.) Nothing more witty, noi 



LETTER VH. FESTIVITY. 35 

to ore inventively horrible, has yet bee a produced in the 
evil literature, or by the evil art, of man; nor can I con- 
ceive it possible to go beyond either in their specialities 
of corruption. The text is full of blasphemies, subtle, 
tremendous, hideous in shamelessness, some put into the 
mouths of priests ; the illustrations are, in a word, one 
continuous revelry in the most loathsome and monstrous 
aspects of death and sin, enlarged into fantastic ghastli- 
ness of caricature, as if seen through the distortion and 
trembling of the hot smoke of the mouth of hell. Take 
this following for a general type of what they seek in 
death : one of the most laboured designs is of a man cut in 
two, downwards, by the sweep of a sword — one-half of him 
falls towards the spectator ; the other half is elaborately 
drawn in its section — giving the profile of the divided 
nose and lips; cleft jaw — breast— and entrails; and this 
is done with farther pollution and horror of intent in the 
circumstances, which I do not choose to describe — still 
less some other of the designs which seek for fantastic 
extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of death. 
But of all the 425, there is not one which does not vio- 
late every instinct of decency and law of virtue or life, 
written in the human soul. 

Now, my friend, among the many "Signs of the 
T^mes " the production of a book like this is a significant 



36 TIME AOT> TIDE. 

one : but it becomes more significant still when con- 
nected with the farther fact, that M. Gustave Dore, the 
designer of this series of plates, has just been received 
with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as 
the fittest and most able person whom they could at 
present find to illustrate, to their minds, and recommend 
with graciousness, of sacred art, their hitherto unadorned 
Bible for them. 

Of which Bible and of the use we at present make of 
it in England, having a grave word or two to say in my 
next letter (preparatory to the examination of that verse 
which haunted me through the Japanese juggling, and 
of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the 
public esteem of it to consider at your leisure. 



Ccttev S. 

The Four Possible Theories respecting the Authority of 

the Bible. 

March 7, 1867. 

I haye your yesterday's letter, but must not allow my- 
self to be diverted from the business in hand for this 
once, for it is the most important of which I have to 
write to you. 

Tou must have seen long ago that the essential dif- 
ference between the political economy I am trying tc 
teach, and the popular science, is, that mine is based on 
presumably attainable honesty in men, and conceivable 
respect in them for the interests of others, while the pop- 
ular science founds itself wholly on their supposed con- 
stant regard for their own, and on their honesty only so 
far as thereby likely to be secured. 

It becomes, therefore, for me, and for all who believe 
anything I say, a great primal question on what this pre- 
sumably attainable honesty is to be based. 

"Is it to be based on religion? " you may ask. "Are 
we to be honest for fear of losing heaven if we are dis- 



38 TIME AND TIDE. 

honest, or (to put it as generously as we may) for fear of 
displeasing God? Or, are we to be lionest on specula- 
tion, because honesty is the best policy ; and to invest in 
virtue as in an undepreciable stock ? " 

And my answer is — not in any hesitating or diffident 
way (and you know, my friend, that whatever people maj 
say of me, I often do speak diffidently ; though when I am 
diffident of things. I like to avoid speaking of them, if it 
may be ; but here i say with no shadow of doubt) — your 
honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. 
Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your 
honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven ; 
poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over 
the day and over the night. If you ask why you are to be 
lionest — you are, in the question itself, dishonoured. " Be- 
cause you are a man," is the only answer ; and therefore I 
said in a former letter that to make your children capable 
of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men 
first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound ; 
but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about 
him. 

It is not, therefore, because I am endeavouring to 
lay down a foundation of religious concrete on which to 
build piers of policy, that you so often find me quoting 
Bible texts in defence of this or that principle or assertion 



LETTEK Vin. THINGS WEI1TEN. 39 

But the fact that such references are an offence, as I know 
them to be, to many of the readers of these political essays, 
is one among many others, which I would desire you to 
reflect upon (whether you are yourself one of the offended 
or not), as expressive of the singular position which the 
mind of the British public has at present taken with re- 
spect to its worshipped Book. The positions, honestly ten- 
able, before I use any more of its texts, I must try to de- 
fine for you. 

All the theories possible to theological disputants 
respecting the Bible are resolvable into four, and four only. 

1. The first is that of the comparatively illiterate 
modern religious w r orld, namely, that every word of the 
book know r n to them as " The Bible" was dictated by the 
Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His " Word." 
This theory is of course tenable, though honestly, yet by 
no ordinarily w r ell- educated person. 

2. The second theory is, that although admitting verbal 
error, the substance of the whole collection of books called 
the Bible is absolutely true, and furnished to man by Di- 
vine inspiration of the speakers and writers of it; and 
that every one who honestly and prayerfully seeks for 
such truth in it as is necessary for salvation, will infallibly 
find it there. 

This theory is that held by most of our good and up- 



40 TIME A]S T D TIDE. 

right clergymen, and the better class of the professedly 
religions laity. 

3. The third theory is that the group of books which 
we call the Bible were neither written nor collected undei 
any Divine guidance, securing them from substantia] 
error ; and that they contain, like all other human 
writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring 
thoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they never- 
theless relate, on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the 
one God with the first races of man, and His dealings 
with them in aftertime through Christ ; that they record 
true miracles, and boar true witness to the resurrection of 
the dead, and the life of the world to come. 

This is a theory held by many of the active leaders ol 
modern thought in England. 

4. The fourth, and last possible theory is that the mass 
of religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts 
which we hitherto know to have been made by any of the 
races of men towards the discovery of some relations with 
the spiritual world ; that they are only trustworthy as 
expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs of earnest 
men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more 
authoritative claim on our faith than the religious specu- 
lations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, 
and Indians ; but are, in common with all these, to be rev« 



LETTER Vm. — THINGS WRITTEN. 41 

erently studied, as containing the best wisdom which 
human intellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has 
hitherto been able to gather between birth and death. 

This has been, for the last half century, the theory oi 
the leading scholars and thinkers of Europe. 

There is yet indeed one farther condition of incredulity 
attainable, and sorrowfully attained, by many men of 
powerfully intellect — the incredulity, namely, of inspira 
tion in any sense, or of help given by any Divine power, 
to the thoughts of men. But this form of infidelity merely 
indicates a natural incapacity for receiving certain emo- 
tions ; though many honest and good men belong to this 
insentient class. 

The educated men, therefore, who may be seriously ap- 
pealed to, in these days, on questions of moral respon- 
sibility, as modified by Scripture, are broadly divisible 
into three classes, severally holding the three last theories 
above stated. 

Now, whatever power a passage from the statedly au- 
thoritative portions of the Bible may have over the mind 
of a person holding the fourth theory, it will have a pro- 
portionately greater over that of persons holding the 
third or the second. I, therefore, always imagine myself 
speaking to the fourth class of theorists. If I can per- 
suade or influence them, I am logically surf of the others. 



4:2 TIME AJ5TD TIDE. 

I say " logically, " for in the actual fact, strange as it may 
seem, no persons are so little likely to submit to a pas- 
sage of Scripture not to their liking, as those who are 
most positive on the subject of its general inspiration. 

Addressing, then, this fourth class of thinkers, I would 
say to them, when asking them to enter on any subject of 
importance to national morals, or conduct, " This book, 
which has been the accepted guide of the moral intelli- 
gence of Europe for some 1,500 years, enforces certain 
simple laws of human conduct which you know have alsc 
been agreed upon in every main point by all the reli- 
gious and by all the greatest profane writers, of every age 
and country. This book primarily forbids pride, lasciv- 
iousness, and covetousness ; and you know, that all great 
thinkers, in every nation of mankind, have similarly for- 
bade these mortal vices. This book enjoins truth, temper- 
ance, charity, and equity ; and you know that every great 
Egyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins these also. You 
know besides, that through all the mysteries of human fate 
and history, this one great law of fate is written on the 
walls of cities, or in their dust, — written in letters of light 
and letters of blood, —that where truth, temperance, and 
equity have been preserved, all strength, and peace, and 
joy have been preserved also; — that were lying, lasciv 
tousness, and covetousness have been practised, thei e has 



LETTER Vm. THINGS WRITTEN. 4.3 

followed an infallible, and for centuries irrecoverable, ruin. 
And you know, lastly, that the observance of this common 
law of righteousness, commending itself to all the pure 
instincts of men, and fruitful in their temporal good, is by 
the religious writers of every nation, and chiefly in this 
venerated Scripture of ours, connected with some distinct 
hope of better life, and righteousness, to come. 

" Let it not then offend you if, deducing principles of 
action first from the laws and facts of nature, I neverthe- 
less fortify them also by appliance of the precepts, or sug- 
gestive and probable teachings of this Book, of which the 
authority is over many around you, more distinctly than 
over you, and which, confessing to be divine, they, at 
least, can only disobey at their moral peril," 

On these grounds, and in this temper, 1 am in the 
habit of appealing to passages of Scripture in my writ- 
ings on political economy ; and in this temper I will ask 
you to consider with me some conclusions which appear 
to me derivable from that text about Miriam, which 
haunted me through the jugglery; and from certain 
others. 



fetter 9. 

The Use of Music and Dancing under the Jewish Th& 
ocracy, compared with their Use by the Modern 
French. 

March 10, 1867. 

Haying, I hope, made you now clearly understand 
with what feeling I would use the authority of the book 
which the British public, professing to consider sacred, 
have lately adorned for themselves with the work of the 
boldest violator of the instincts of human honour and de- 
cency known yet in art-history, I will pursue by the help 
of that verse about Miriam, and some others, the subject 
which occupied my mind at both theatres, and to 
which, though in so apparently desultory manner, I 
have been nevertheless very earnestly endeavouring to 
lead you. 

The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam, 
with timbrels and with dances, was, as you doubtless re- 
member, their expression of passionate triumph and 
thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of their deli?- 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 45 

erance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had beeo 
by the utter death of their enemies, and accompanied by 
stupendous miracle; no human creatures could in an 
hour of triumph be surrounded by circumstances more 
solemn. I am not going to try to excite your feelings 
about them. Consider only for yourself what that see 
ing of the Egyptians " dead upon the sea-shore " meant 
to every soul that saw it. And then reflect that these 
intense emotions of mingled horror, triumph, and grati- 
tude were expressed, in the visible presence of the Deity, 
by music and dancing. If you answer that you do not 
believe the Egyptians so perished, or that God ever ap 
peared in a pillar of cloud, I reply, " Be it so — believe or 
disbelieve, as you choose ; — This is yet assuredly the fact, 
that the author of the poem or fable of the Exodus sup- 
posed that under such circumstances of Divine interposi- 
tion as he had invented, the triumph of the Israelitish 
women would have been, and ought to have been, under 
the direction of a prophetess, expressed by music and 
dancing. 55 

Nor was it possible that he should think otherwise, at 
whatever period he wrote ; both music and dancing being 
among all great ancient nations an appointed and very 
principal part of the worship of the gods. 

And that very theatrical entertainment at which I 



46 TIME AND TIDE. 

sate thinking over these things for you — that pantcinime, 
which depended throughout for its success on an appeal 
to the vices of the lower London populace, was in itself 
nothing but a corrupt remnant of the religious cereino* 
nies which guided the most serious faiths of the Greek 
mind, and laid the foundation of their gravest moral and 
didactic — more forcibly so because at the same time dra- 
matic — literature. Returning to the Jewish history, you 
find soon afterwards this enthusiastic religious dance and 
song employed in their more common and habitual man- 
ner, in the idolatries under Sinai; but beautifully again 
and tenderly, after the triumph of Jephthah, " And be- 
hold his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels 
and with dances." Again, still more notably at the tri- 
umph of David with Saul, " the women came out of all 
the cities of Israel singing and dancing, to meet King 
Saul with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of mu- 
sic." And you have this joyful song and dance of the 
virgins of Israel not only incidentally alluded to in the 
most solemn passages of Hebrew religious poetry (as in 
Psalm lxviii., 24, 25, and Psalm cxlix., 2, 3), but ap- 
proved, and the restoration of it promised as a sign of 
God's perfect blessing, most earnestly by the saddest of 
the Hebrew prophets, and in one of the most beautiful 
of all his sayings. 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 47 

" The Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying, ' Yea, 
I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, 
with loving-kindness have I drawn thee. — I will build 
thee, and thou shalt be built, O Virgin of Israel ; thou 
sh alt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go 
forth in the dances with them that make merry" (Jerern. 
xxxi., 3, 4; and compare v. 13). And finally, you have 
in two of quite the most important passages in the whole 
series of Scripture (one in the Old Testament, one in the 
New), the rejoicing in the repentance from, and remission 
of sins, expressed by means of music and dancing, namely, 
in the rapturous dancing of David before the returning 
ark; and in the joy of the Father's household at the 
repentance of the prodigal son. 

I could put all this much better and more convincingly 
before you, if I were able to take any pains in writing at 
present; but I am not, as I told you; being weary and 
ill ; neither do I much care now to use what, in the very 
truth, are but tricks of literary art, in dealing with this so 
grave subject. You see I write you my letter straight- 
forward, and let you see all my scratchings out and 
puttings in ; and if the way I say things shocks you, or 
any other reader of these letters, I cannot help it ; this 
only I know, that what I tell you is true, and written 
more earnestly than anything I ever wrote with my best 



48 * TIME AND TIDE. 

literary care ; and that yon will find it useful to think 
upon, however it be said. Now, therefore, to draw 
towards our conclusion. Supposing the Bible inspired, in 
any of the senses" above defined, you have in these pas- 
sages a positively Divine authority for the use of song 
and dance, as a means of religious service, and expression 
of national thanksgiving. Supposing it not inspired, you 
have (taking the passages for as slightly authoritative as 
you choose) record in them, nevertheless, of a state of 
mind in a great nation producing the most beautiful 
religious poetry and perfect moral law hitherto known tc 
us, yet only expressible by them, to the fulfilment of their 
joyful passion, by means of processional dance and choral 
song. 

Now I want you to contrast this state of religious 
rapture with some of our modern phases of mind in 
parallel circumstances. You see that the promise of 
Jeremiah's, " Thou shalt go forth in the dances of them 
that make merry, 5 ' is immediately followed by this, 
" Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of 
Samaria." And again, at the yearly feast to the Lord 
in Shiloh, the dancing of the virgins was in the midst 
of the vineyards (Judges xxi., 21), the feast of the vint- 
age being in the south, as our harvest-home in the 
north, a peculiar occasion of joy and thanksgiving 



LETTEK IX. THANKSGIVING. 4:9 

X happened to pass the autumn of 1863 in one of the 
great vine districts of Switzerland, under the slopes of 
the outlying branch of the Jura which limits the arable 
plain of the Canton Zurich, some fifteen miles north 
of Zurich itself. That city has always been a renowned 
stronghold of Swiss Protestantism, next in importance 
only to Geneva; and its evangelical zeal for the con- 
version of the Catholics of TJri, and endeavours to bring 
about that spiritual result by stopping the supplies of 
salt they needed to make their cheeses with, brought 
on (the Uri men reading their Matt. v. 13, in a different 
sense) the battle of Keppel, and the death of the re- 
former, Zwinglius. The town itself shows the most grati- 
fying signs of progress in all the modern arts and 
sciences of life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle — 
has a railroad station larger than the London terminus 
of the Chatham and Dover — fouls the stream of the 
Limmat as soon as it issues from the lake, so that you 
might even Y entllre to compare the formerly simple 
and innocent Swiss river (I remember it thirty years 
ago — a current of pale green crystal) with the highly 
educated English streams of Weare or Tyne; and, 
finally, has as many French prints of dissolute tendency 
in its principal shop windows, as if they had the priv- 
ilege of opening on the Parisian Boulevards. I was 



50 TIME A_NT> TIDE. 

somewhat anxious to see what species of thanksgiving 
or exultation would be expressed, at their vintage, by 
the peasantry in the neighbourhood of this much en- 
lightened evangelical and commercial society. It con- 
sisted in two ceremonies only. During the day, the 
servants of the farms where the grapes had been gathered, 
collected in knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired 
horse-pistols, from morning to evening. At night they 
got drunk, and staggered up and down the hill paths, 
uttering at short intervals yells and shrieks, differing 
only from the howling of wild animals by a certain in- 
tended and insolent discordance, only attainr.Lle by the 
malignity of debased human creatures. I must not 
do the injustice to the Zurich peasantry of implying 
that this manner of festivity is peculiar to them. A 
year before, in 1862, I had formed the intention of 
living some years in the neighbourhood of Geneva, 
and had established myself experimentally on the eastern 
slope of the Mont Saleve ; but I was forced to abandon 
my purpose at last, because I could not endure the 
rabid howling, on Sunday evenings, of the holiday- 
makers who came out from Geneva to get drunk in the 
mountain village. By the way, your last letter, with 
its extracts about our traffic in gin, is very valuable. 
I will come to that part of the business in a little 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 51 

while. Meantime, by friend, note this, respecting what 
I have told you, that in the very centre of Europe, 
in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by 
the most refined and thoughtful persons among all 
Christian nations — a country made by God's hand the 
most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earlh, 
and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest 
patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern 
religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the 
song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the 
bowlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxi- 
cation, a nature sunk more than half way towards 
the beasts ; and you will begin to undei stand why 
the Bible should have been " illustrated " by Grustave 
Dore. 

One word more is needful, though this letter is long 
already. The peculiar ghastliness of this Swiss mode of 
festivity is in its utter failure of joy ; the paralysis and 
helplessness of a vice in which there is neither pleasure, 
nor art. But we are not, throughout Europe, wholly 
thus. There is such a thing, yet, as rapturous song and 
dance among us, though not indicative by any means of 
joy over repentant sinners. You must come back to 
Paris with me again. I had an evening to spare there, 
last summer, for investigation of theatres ; and as there 



52 TIME AND TIDE. 

was nothing at any of them that I cared much about see- 
ing, I asked a valet-de-place at Meurice's, what people 
were generally going to. He said, " All the English went 
to see the Lanterne Magique" I do not care to tell yon 
what general entertainment I received in following, for 
once, the lead of my countrymen ; but it closed with the 
representation of the characteristic dancing of all ages of 
the world ; and the dance given as characteristic of mod- 
ern time was the Cancan, which you will see alluded to in 
the extract given in the note at page 92 of Sesame and 
Lilies. " The ball terminated with a Devilish Chain and 
a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the morning." It was led 
by four principal dancers (who have since appeared in 
London in the Huguenot Captain), and it is many years 
since I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and 
accuracy of art and fulness of animal power and fire are 
concerned. Nothing could be better done, in its own evil 
way, the object of the dance throughout being to express 
in every gesture the wildest fury of insolence and vicious 
passions possible to human creatures. So that you see, 
though for the present we find ourselves utterly incapable 
of a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which 
is presented as characteristic of modern civilization is still 
rapturous enough — but it is with rapture of blasphemy. 
Now, just read from the 17th to the 20th page of the pre- 



LETTER IX. — THANKSGIVING. 53 

face to Sesame and Lilies, and I will try to bring all these 
broken threads into some warp and woof, in my next two 
letters — if I cannot in one. 



fetter 10. 

The Meaning, amd Actual Operation, of Satanic w 
Demoniacal Influence, 

March 16, 1867. 

I am afraid my weaving, after all, will be but rough 
work — and many ends of threads ill-knotted — but you 
will see there's a pattern at last, meant by them all. 

You may gather from the facts given you in my last 
letter, that as the expression of true and holy gladness 
was in old time statedly offered up by men for a part of 
worship to God their Father — so the expression of false 
and unholy gladness is in modern times, with as much 
distinctness and plainness, asserted by them openly to be 
offered to another spirit : " Chain of the Devil, and Can- 
can of Hell" being the names assigned to these modern 
forms of joyous procession. 

Now, you know that among the best and wisest of oni 
present religious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to 
disbelieve, and to preach their disbelief, in the commonly 
received ideas of the Devil, and of his place, and his work 
While, among some of our equally well-meaning, but fai 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 55 

less wise, religious teachers, there is, in consequence, a 
panic spreading, in anticipation of the moral dangers 
which must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. 
One of the last appearances in public of the author of the 
Christian Tear was at a conclave of clergymen assembled 
in defence of faith in damnation. The sense of the meet- 
ing generally was, that there must be such a place as hell, 
because no one would ever behave decently upon earth un- 
less they were kept in wholesome fear of the fires beneath 
it : and Mr. Keble especially insisting on this view, re- 
lated a story ot an old woman, who had a wicked son, 
and who having lately heard with horror of the teaching 
of Mr. Maurice and others, exclaimed pathetically, " My 
son is bad enough as it is, and if he were not afraid of hell, 
what would become of him ! " (I write from memory, and 
cannot answer for the words, but I can for their purport.) 

Now, my friend, I am afraid that I must incur the 
charge of such presumption as may be involved in vari- 
ance from hoik these systems of teaching. 

I dc not merely Relieve there is such a place as hell. I 
know there is such a place ; and I know also that when 
men have got to the point of believing virtue impossible 
but through dread of it, they have got mto it. 

I mean, that according to the distinctness with which 
they hold such a creed, the stain of nether fire has passed 



56 TIME AND TIDE. 

upon them. In the depth of his heart Mr. Keble could 
not have entertained the thought for an instant ; and I 
believe it was only as a conspicuous sign to the religious 
world of the state into which they were sinking, that this 
creed, possible in its sincerity only to the basest of them^ 
was nevertheless appointed to be uttered by the lips of 
the most tender, gracious, and beloved of their teachers. 

" Virtue impossible but for fear of hell "—a lofty creed 
for your English youth — and a holy one ! And yet, my 
friend, there was something of right in the terrors of this 
clerical conclave. For, though you should assuredly be 
able to hold your own in the straight ways of God, with- 
out always believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a 
state of mind much to be dreaded, that you should not 
know the Devil when you see him there. For the proba- 
bility is, that when you see him, the way you are walk- 
ing in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading you 
into quite other neighbourhoods than His. On His way, 
indeed, you may often, like Albert Durer's Knight, see 
the Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops 
always farther and farther behind ; whereas if he jogs 
with you at your side, it is probably one of his own by- 
paths you are got on. And, in any case, it is a highly 
desirable matter that you should know him when you set 
eyes on him, which we are very far from doing in these 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 5'j 

days, having convinced ourselves that the graminivorous 
form of him, with horn and tail, is extant no longer. 
But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of him n 
here ; in the world, with us, and within us, mock as you 
may ; and the fight with him, for the time, sore, and 
widely unprosperous. 

Do not think I am speaking metaphorically, or rhetori- 
cally, or with any other than literal and earnest meaning 
of words. Hear me, I pray you, therefore, for a little 
while, as earnestly as I speak. 

Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by 
which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special 
form of corruption : and whether within Man, or in the 
external world, there is a power or condition of tempta- 
tion which is perpetually endeavouring to reduce every 
glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to such cor- 
ruption as is possible to them. And the more beautiful 
they are, the more fearful is the death which is attached 
as a penalty to their degradation. 

Take for instance that which, in its purity, is the 
source of the highest and purest mortal happiness — Love. 
Think of it first at its highest — as it may exist in the dis- 
ciplined spirit of a perfect human creature ; as it has so 
existed again and again, and does always, wherever it 
truly exists at all, as the purifying passion of the soul 



58 TIME AND TIDE. 

I will not speak of the transcendental and imaginative in 
tensity»in which it may reign in noble hearts, as when it 
inspired the greatest religious poem yet given to men ; 
but lake it in its true and quiet purity in any simple 
lover 'i heart — as you have it expressed, for instance, 
ihva exquisitely, in the Angel in the House : — 

11 And there, With many a blissful tear, 
I vowed to love and prayed to wed 
The maiden who had grown so dear ; — 
Thanked G-od, who had set her in my path 
And promised, as I hoped to win, 
I never would sully my faith 
By the least selfishness or sin ; 
Whatever in her sight I'd seem 
I'd really be ; I ne'er would blend, 
With my delight in her, a dream 
'Twould change her cheek to comprehend ; 
And, if she wished it, would prefer 
Another's to my own success ; 
And always seek the best for her 
With unofficious tenderness." 

Tal e this for the pure type of it in its simplicity ; and 
then think of what corruption this passion is capable. I 
will give you a type of that also, and at your very doors. 
I cannot refer you to the time when the crime happened ; 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 59 

bu. it was some four or five years ago, near Newcastle, 
and it has remained always as a ghastly landmark in my 
mind, owing to the horror of the external circumstances. 
The body of the murdered woman was found naked, 
rolled into a heap of ashes, at the mouth of one of youi 
pits. 

Take those two limiting examples, of the Pure Pas- 
sion, and of its corruption. JSTow, whatever influence it 
is, without or within us, which has a tendency to degrade 
the one towards the other, is literally and accurately 
" Satanic." And this treacherous or deceiving spirit is 
perpetually at work, so that all the worst evil among us is 
a betrayed or corrupted good. Take religion itself: the 
desire of finding out God, and placing one's self in some 
true son's or servant's relation to Him. The Devil, that 
is to say, the deceiving spirit within us, or outside of ufe 
mixes up our own vanity with this desire; makes us 
think that in our love to God we have established some 
connection with Him which separates us from our fellow- 
men, and renders us superior to them. Then it takes but 
one wave of the Devil's hand ; and we are burning them 
alive for taking the liberty of contradicting us. 

Take the desire of teaching — the entirely unselfish and 
noble instinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the 
truth we know, and guarding them from the errors we 



60 TIME AND TIDE. 

see them in danger of; — there is no nobler, no more con- 
stant instinct in honourable breasts; but let the Devil 
formalise, and mix the pride of a profession with it — get 
foolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, 
and make their giddy heads giddier by putting them up 
in pulpits above a submissive crowd — and you have it 
instantly corrupted into its own reverse ; you have an 
alliance against the light, shrieking at the sun, and moon, 
and stars, as profane spectra : — a company of the blind, 
beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. " The 
heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the 
laws of creation are treacherous ; the poles of the earth 
are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. 
Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will lead you." 

Take the desire and faith of mutual help ; the virtue 
of vowed brotherhood for the accomplishment of com- 
mon purpose (without which nothing can be wrought by 
multitudinous bands of men) ; let the Devil put pride 
of caste into it, and you have a military organization 
applied for a thousand years to maintain that higher 
caste in idleness by robbing the labouring poor ; let the 
Devil put a few small personal interests into it, and you 
have all faithful deliberation on national law rendered 
impossible in the parliaments of Europe, oy the antag- 
onism of parties. 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 61 

Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense 
of indignation against crime ; let the Devil colour it 
with personal passion, and you have a mighty race of 
true and tender-hearted men living for centuries in such 
bloody feud that every note and word of their national 
songs is a dirge, and every rock of their hills is a grave- 
stone. Take the love of beauty, and power of imagina- 
tion, which are the source of every true achievement in 
art; let the Devil touch them with sensuality, and they 
are stronger than the sword or the flame to blast the 
cities where they were born, into ruin without hope. 
Take the instinct of industry and ardour of commerce, 
which are meant to be the support and mutual mainte- 
nance of man ; let the Devil touch them with avarice, 
and you shall see the avenues of the exchange choked 
with corpses that have died of famine. 

Now observe — I leave you to call this deceiving spirit 
what you like — or to theorise about it as you like. AH 
that I desire you to recognise is the fact of its being here, 
and the need of its being fought with. If you take the 
Bible's account of it, or Dante's, or Milton's, you will 
receive the image of it as a mighty spiritual creature, 
commanding others, and resisted by others; if you take 
^Eschylus's or Hesiod's account of it, you will hold it 
for a partly elementary and unconscious adversity of fate. 



62 TIME AJSD TIDE. 

and partly for a group of monstrous spiritual agencies, 
connected with death, and begotten out of the dust ; if 
you take a modern rationalist's, you will accept it foi 
a mere treachery and want of vitality in our own moral 
nature exposing it to loathsomeness of moral disease, as 
the body is capable of mortification or leprosy. I do 
not care what you call it, — whose history you believe 
of it, — nor what you yourself can imagine about it ; the 
origin, or nature, or name may be as you will, but the 
deadly reality of the thing is with us, and warring 
against us, and on our true war with it depends what- 
ever life we can win. Deadly reality, I say. The puff- 
adder or horned asp are not more real. Unbelievable, — 
those, — unless you had seen them; no fable could have 
been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within 
its own poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent 
— working its way sidelong in the sand. As real, but 
with sting of eternal death — this worm that dies not, 
and fire that is not quenched, within our souls, or around 
them. Eternal death, I say — sure, that, whatever creed 
you hold ; — if the old Scriptural one, Death of perpetual 
banishment from before God's face ; if the modern ration- 
alist one, Death eternal for us y instant and unredeemable 
ending of lives wasted in misery. 

That is what this unquestionably present — this, ac- 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 63 

cording to his power, omm-present — fiend, brings us to 
daily. He is the person to be "voted" against, nry 
working friend ; it is worth something, having a vote 
against him, if yon can get it ! Which you can, indeed ; 
but not by gift from Cabinet Ministers ; you must work 
warily with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's 
blood, before you can record that vote effectually. 
Of which more in next letter. 



Cetter 11. 

The Satanic Power is mainly Twofold / the Power of 
causing Falsehood and the Power of causing Pain. 
The Resistance is ly Law of Honour and Law of 
Delight 

March 19, 1867. 

5Tou may perhaps have thought my last three or four 
letters mere rhapsodies. They are nothing of the kind ; 
they are accurate accounts of literal facts, which we have 
to deal with daily. This thing, or power, opposed to 
God's power, and specifically called " Mammon " in the 
Sermon on the Mount, is in deed and in truth a con- 
tinually present and active enemy, properly called "Arch- 
enemy" that is to say, " Beginning and Prince of 
Enemies," and daily we have to record our vote for, 
or against him. Of the manner of which record we 
were next to consider. 

This enemy is always recognisable, briefly in two func- 
tions. He is pre-eminently the Lord of Lies and the 
Lord of Pain. Wherever lies are, he is; wherever 
pain is, he has been — so that of the Spirit of Wisdom 



LETTER XI. THE GOLDEN BOUGH. 65 

(who is called God's Helper, as Satan His Adversary) 
it is written, not only that by her Kings reign, and 
Prince? decree justice, but also that her w T ays are wayft 
of Pleasantness, and all her paths Peace. 

Therefore, you will succeed, you working men, in 
recording your votes against this arch-enemy, precisely 
in the degree in which you can do away with falsehood 
and pain in your work and lives ; and bring truth into 
the one, and pleasure into the other ; all education being 
directed to make yourselves and your children capable of 
Honesty, and capable of Delight / and to rescue your- 
selves from iniquity and agony. And this is what I 
meant by saying in the preface to Unto this Last that the 
central requirement of education consisted in giving 
habits of gentleness and justice; "gentleness" (as I will 
show you presently) being the best single word I could 
have used to express the capacity for giving and receiving 
true pleasure; and "justice," being similarly the most 
comprehensive word for all kind of honest dealing. 

Now, I began these letters with the purpose of explain- 
ing the nature of the requirements of justice first, and 
then those of gentleness, but I allowed myself to be led 
into that talk about the theatres, not only because the 
thoughts could be more easily written as they came, but 
also because I was able thus to illustrate for you more 



66 TIME AND TIDE. 

directly the nature of the enemy we have to deal with. 
You do not perhaps know, though I say this diffidently 
(for I often find working men know many things which 
one would have thought were out of their way), that 
music was among the Greeks, quite the first means of 
education; and that it was so connected with their 
system of ethics and of intellectural training, that the God 
of Music is with them also the God of Righteousness ; — 
the God who purges and avenges iniquity, and contends 
with their Satan as represented under the form of Python, 
" the corrupter." And the Greeks were incontrovertibly 
right in this. Music is the nearest at hand, the most 
orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, of all 
bodily pleasures; it is also the only one which is equally 
helpful to all the ages of man, — helpful from the nurse's 
song to her infant, to the music, unheard of others, which 
often, if not most frequently, haunts the deathbed of pure 
and innocent spirits. And the action of the deceiving or 
devilish power is in nothing shown quite so distinctly 
among us at this day, — not even in our commercial dis- 
honesties, nor in our social cruelties, — as in its having 
been able to take away music, as an instrument of educa- 
tion, altogether; and to enlist it almost wholly in the 
service of superstition on the one hand, and of sensuality 
on the other. 



LETTER XI. THE GOLDEN BOUGH. 67 

This power of the Muses, then, and its proper influ- 
ence over your workmen, I shall eventually have much to 
insist upon with you ; and in doing so I shall take that 
beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son (which I have al- 
ready referred to), and explain as far as I know, the sig 
nificance of it, and then I will take the three means of 
festivity, or wholesome human joy, therein stated — fine 
dress, rich food, and music ; — (" bring forth the fairest 
robe for him," — " bring forth the fatted calf, and kill it ; " 
" as he drew nigh, he heard music and dancing ; ") and I 
will show you how all these three things, fine dress, rich 
food, and music (including ultimately all the other arts) 
are meant to be sources of life, and means of moral disci- 
pline, to all men ; and how they have all three been 
made, by the Devil, the means of guilt, dissoluteness, and 
death. But first I must return to my original plan of 
these letters, and endeavour to set down for you some of 
the laws which in a true Working Men's Parliament 
must be ordained in defence of Honesty. 

Of which laws (preliminary to all others, and neces 
sary above all others), having now somewhat got my rav- 
elled threads together again, I will begin to talk in mj 
uext letter. 



Cetter \% 

The necessity of Imperative Law to the Prosperity of 

States. 

March 19, 1867. 
I haye your most interesting letter,* which I keep foi 
reference, when I come to the consideration of its sub- 
ject in its proper place, under the head of the abuse 
of Food. I do not wonder that your life should be ren- 
dered unhappy by the scenes of drunkenness which you 
are so often compelled to witness ; nor that this so gigan- 
tic and infectious evil should seem to you the root of the 
greater part of the misery of our lower orders. I do not 
wonder that Sir Walter Trevelyan has given his best 
energy to its repression; nor even that another friend, 
George Cruikshank, has warped the entire current of his 
thoughts and life, at once to my admiration and my sor- 
row, from their natural field of work, that he might spend 
them, in struggle, for the poor lowest people whom he 
knows so well, with this fiend who grasps his victims by 
the throat first, and then by the heart. I wholly sympa- 
thise with you in indignation at the methods of tempta 
* Appendix 4. 



LETTER Xn. DICTATORSHIP. 69 

tion employed, and at the use of the fortunes made, by the 
vendors of death ; and whatever immediately applicable 
legal means there might be of restricting the causes of 
drunkenness, I should without hesitation desire to bring 
into operation. But all such appliance I consider tempo- 
rary and provisionally ; nor, while there is record of the 
miracle at Cana (not to speak of the sacrament) can I con- 
ceive it possible, without (logically) the denial of the 
entire truth of the New Testament, to reprobate the use 
of wine as a stimulus to the powers of life. Supposing we 
did deny the words and deeds of the Founder of Christian 
ity, the authority of the wisest heathens, especially that of 
Plato in the Laws, is wholly against abstinence from 
wine ; and much as I can believe, and as I have been en- 
deavouring to make you believe also, of the subtlety of the 
Devil, I do not suppose the vine to have been one of his 
inventions. Of this, however, more in another place. 
By the way, was it not curious that in the Manchester 
Examiner, in which that letter of mine on the abuse of 
dancing appeared, there chanced to be in the next column 
a paragraph giving an account of a girl stabbing her 
betrayer in a ball room ; and another paragraph describ- 
ing a Parisian character, which gives exactly the extreme 
type I wanted, for example of the abuse of food ? * 
* Appendix 5. 



70 TIME AND TIDE. 

I return, however, now to the examination of possible 
means for the enforcement of justice, in temper and ii 
act, as the first of political requirements. And as, in 
stating my conviction of the necessity of certain stringent 
laws on this matter, I shall be in direct opposition to Mr 
Stuart Mill ; and more or less in opposition to other pro- 
fessors of modern political economy, as well as to many 
honest and active promoters of the privileges of working 
men (as if privilege only were wanted, and never re- 
straint ! ), I will give you, as briefly as I can, the grounds 
on which I am prepared to justify such opposition. 

When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open 
boat, and the boat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and 
the prospect of making land distant, laws are instantly 
established and enforced which no one thinks of disobey- 
ing. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is 
acknowledged without dispute ; and an equal liability to 
necessary labour. No man who can row is allowed to re- 
fuse his oar ; no man, however much money he may have 
saved in his pocket, is allowed so much as half a biscuit 
beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who en- 
dangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and 
laid in the bottom of the boat, without the smallest com- 
punction for such violation of the principles of individual 
liberty; and on the other hand, any child, or woman, 01 



LETTEK XII. DICTATORSHIP. 71 

aged person, who was helpless, and exposed to greater 
danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive 
more than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccom- 
panied with unanimous self-sacrifice, on the part of the 
labouring crew. 

There is never any question, under circumstances like 
these, of what is right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, 
wise or foolish. If there he any question, there is little 
hope for boat or crew. The right man is put at the 
helm ; every available hand is set to the oars ; the sick 
are tended, and the vicious restrained, at once, and de- 
cisively ; or if not, the end is near. 

Now, the circumstances of every associated group of 
human society, contending bravely for national honours, 
and felicity of life, differ only from those thus supposed, 
in the greater, instead of less, necessity for the establish- 
ment of restraining law. There is no point of difference 
in the difficulties to be met, nor in the rights reciprocally 
to be exercised. Yice and indolence are not less, but 
more, injurious in a nation than in a boat's company ; 
the modes in which they affect the interests of worthy 
persons being far more complex, and more easily con 
cealed. The right of restraint, vested in those who la- 
bour, over those who would impede their labour, is as ab- 
solute in the large as in the small society; the equal 



72 TIME AND TIDE. 

claim to share in whatever is necessary to the common 
life (or commonwealth) is as indefeasible ; the claim of 
the sick and helpless to be cared for by the strong with 
earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as imperative ; the 
necessity that the governing authority should be in the 
hands of a true and trained pilot is as clear, and as con 
stant. In none of these conditions is there any difference 
between a nation and a boat's company. The only dif- 
ference is in this, that the impossibility of discerning the 
effects of individual error and crime, or of counteracting 
them by individual effort, in the affairs of a great nation, 
renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society 
that direction by law should be sternly established. As- 
sume that your boat's crew is disorderly and licentious, 
and will, by agreement, submit to no order ; — the most 
troublesome of them will yet be easily discerned; and 
the chance is that the best man among them knocks him 
down. Common instinct of self-preservation will make 
the rioters put a good sailor at the helm, and impulsive 
pity and occasional help will be, by heart and hand, here 
and there given to visible distress. Not so in the shij 
of the realm. The most troublesome persons in it are 
usually the least recognized for such, and the most active 
in its management ; the best men mind their own busi- 
ness patiently, and are never thought of ; the good helms- 



LETTER XII. DICTATORSHIP. 73 

n»an never touches tlie tiller but in the last extremity ; 
and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only frorr 
every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the 
aspect is of Cleopatra's galley — under hatches, there is a 
slave-hospital ; while, finally (and this is the most fatal 
difference of all), even the few persons who care to inter- 
fere energetically, with purpose of doing good, can, in a 
large society, discern so little of the real state of evil to 
be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of 
dealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be mis- 
directed, and some may even do more harm than good. 
Whereas it is the sorrowful law of this universe that 
evil, even unconscious and unintended, never fails of its 
effect ; and in a state where the evil and the good, under 
conditions of individual " liberty," are allowed to con- 
tend together, not only every stroke on the Devil's side 
tells — but every slip (the mistakes of wicked men being 
as mischievous as their successes); while on the side of 
right, there will be much direct and fatal defeat, and, 
even of its measures of victory, half will be fruitless. 

It is true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing 
but the right conquers : the prevalent thorns of wrong, 
at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame : and of the 
good seed sown, one grain in a thousand, at last, verily 

comes up — and somebody lives by it ; but most of our 

4 



74 TIME AND TIDE. 

great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson them« 
selves, are a little too encouraging in their proclamation 
of this comfort, not, to my mind, very sufficient, when 
for the present our fields are full of nothing but nettles 
and thistles, instead of wheat ; and none of them seem to 
me yet to have enough insisted on the inevitable power 
and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter 
extinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its 
effect — but poison never : and while, in summing the 
observation of past life, not unwatchfully spent, I can 
truly say that I have a thousand times seen patience dis- 
appointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have 
never yet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice con- 
clude but in calamity. 

There is, however, one important condition in national 
economy, in which the analogy of that of a ship's com- 
pany is incomplete : namely, that while labour at oar or 
sail is necessarily united, and can attain no independent 
good, or personal profit, the labour properly undertaken 
by the seijpral members of a political community is neces- 
sarily, and justly, within certain limits, independent ; and 
obtains for them independent advantage, of which, if you 
will glance at the last paragraph of the first essay in 
Munera Pulveris* you will see I should be the last 

* Appendix 6. 



LETTER XII. — DICTATORSHIP. 75 

peison to propose depriving them. This great difference 
in final condition involves necessarily much complexity in 
the system and application of general laws ; but it in no 
wise abrogates, — on the contrary, it renders yet more 
imperative, — the necessity for the firm ordinance of such 
laws, which, marking the due limits of independent 
agency, may enable it to exist in full energy, not only 
without becoming injurious, but so as more variously and 
perfectly to promote the entire interests of the common- 
wealth. 

I will address myself, therefore, in my next letter, to 
the statement of some of these necessary laws. 



Cettcr 13. 

The Proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke; or y 
" Overseer " and " Leader." 

March 21, 1867. 
I see, by your last letter, for which I heartily thank 
you, that you would not sympathise with me in my sor- 
row for the desertion of his own work by George Cruik- 
shank, that he may fight in the front of the temperance 
ranks. But yon do not know what work he has left un- 
done, nor how much richer inheritance you might have 
received from his hand. It was no more his business to 
etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this 
moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It is 
" the first mild day of March " (high time, I think, that 
it should be !), and by rights I ought to be out among the 
budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn, 
and clusters of primrose. This is my right work ; and it 
is not, in the inner gist and truth of it, right nor good, for 
you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his great 
gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughly clear and 
definite one, should both of us be tormented by agony of 



LETTER Xin. EPISCOPACY AJSTD DUKEDOM. 77 

indignation and compassion, till we are forced to give up 
our peace, and pleasure, and power ; and rush down into 
the streets and lanes of the city, to do the little that is in 
the strength of our single hands against their uncleanli- 
ness and iniquity. But, as in a sorely besieged town, 
every man must to the ramparts, whatsoever business he 
leaves, so neither he nor I have had any choice but to 
leave our household stuff, and go on crusade, such as we 
are called to ; not that I mean, if Fate may be anywise 
resisted, to give up the strength of my life, as he has 
given his ; for I think he was wrong in doing so ; and 
that he should only have carried the fiery cross his ap- 
pointed leagues, and then given it to another hand : and, 
for my own part, I mean these very letters to close my 
political work for many a day ; and I write them, not 
in any hope of their being at present listened to, but to 
disburden my heart of the witness I have to bear, that I 
may be free to go back to my garden lawns, and paint 
birds and flowers there. 

For these same statutes which we are to consider to- 
day, have indeed been in my mind now these fourteen 
years, ever since I wrote the last volume of the Stones of 
Vemce, in which you will find, in the long note on Mod- 
ern Education (p. 212), most of what I have been now in 
detail writing to you, hinted in abstract ; and, at the 



78 TIME AOT> TIDE. 

close of it, this sentence, of which I solemnly now avouch 
(in thankfulness that I was permitted to write it), every 
word : — " Finally, I hold it for indisputable, that the first 
duty of a state is to see that every child born therein 
shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it 
attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting 
this the Government must have an authority over the 
people of which we now do not so much as dream." 

That authority I did not then endeavour to define, for I 
knew all such assertions would be useless, and that the 
necessarily resultant outcry would merely diminish my 
influence in other directions. But now I do not care 
about influence any more, it being only my concern to 
say truly that which I know, and, if it may be, get some 
quiet life, yet, among the fields in the evening shadow. 

There is, I suppose, no word which men are prouder of 
the right to attach to their names, or more envious of 
others who bear it, when they themselves may not, than 
the word "noble." Do you know what it originally 
meant, and always, in the right use of it, means? It 
means a " known " person ; one who has risen far enough 
above others to draw men's eyes to him, and to be known 
(honorably) for such and such an one. " Ignoble," on the 
other hand, is derived from the same root as the word 
''ignorance." It means an unknown, inglor'ous person, 



LETTER Xm. EPISCOPACY AJSTD DUKEDOM. 7S 

And no more singular follies have been committed by 
weak human creatures than those which have been 
caused by the instinct, pure and simple, of escaping from 
this obscurity. Instinct, which, corrupted, will hesitate 
at no means, good or evil, of satisfying itself with noto- 
riety — instinct, nevertheless, which, like all other natural 
ones, has a true and pure purpose, and ought always in a 
worthy way to be satisfied. 

All men ought to be in this sense " noble ; " known of 
each other, and desiring to be known. And the first law 
which a nation, desiring to conquer all the devices of the 
Father of Lies, should establish among its people, is that 
they shall be so known. 

Will you please now read the forty-fifth and forty-sixth 
pages of Sesame and Lilies.* The reviewers in the eccle- 
siastical journals laughed at them, as a rhapsody, when 
the book came out ; none having the slighest notion of 
what I meant (nor, indeed, do I well see how it could 
be otherwise !). Nevertheless, I meant precisely and 
literally what is there said, namely, that a bishop's duty 
being to watch over the souls of his people, and give 
account of every one of them, it becomes practically 
necessary for him first to give some account of their hodies. 
Which he was wont to do in the early days of Christi 

* Appendix 7. 



80 * TIME AND TIDE. 

anity by help of a person called " deacon " or " minister- 
ing servant," whose name is still retained among pre- 
liminary ecclesiastical dignities, vainly enough ! Putting, 
however, all question of forms and names aside, the thing 
actually needing to be done is this — that over every 
hundred (or some not much greater number) of the 
families composing a Christian State, there should be ap- 
pointed an overseer, or bishop, to render account, to the 
State, of the life of every individual in those families ; 
and to have care both of their interest and conduct to 
such an extent as they may be willing to admit, or as 
their faults may justify ; so that it may be impossible for 
any person, however humble, to suffer from unknown 
want, or live in unrecognised crime ;— such help and 
observance being rendered without officiousness either 
of interference or inquisition (the limits of both being 
determined by national law), but with the patient and 
gentle watchfulness which true Christian pastors now 
exercise over their flocks ; only with a higher legal au- 
thority, presently to be defined, of interference on due 
occasion. 

And with this farther function, that such overseers 
shall be not only the pastors, but the biographers, of their 
people ; a written statement of the principal events in the 
life of each family being annually required to be rendered 



LETTER Xm. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM. 81 

by tliem to a superior State officer. These records, laid 
up in public offices, would soon furnish indications of the 
families whom it would be advantageous to the nation to 
advance in position, or distinguish with honour, and aid 
by such reward as it should be the object of every Gov- 
ernment to distribute no less punctually, and far more 
frankly, than it distributes punishment (compare Mu 
nera Pulveris, Essay IY., in paragraph on Critic Law), 
while the mere fact of permanent record being kept of 
every event of importance, whether disgraceful or worthy 
of praise, in each family, would of itself be a deterrent 
from crime, and a stimulant to well-deserving conduct, far 
beyond mere punishment or reward. 

Nor need you think that there would be anything in 
such a system un-English, or tending to espionage. No 
uninvited visits should ever be made in any house, unless 
law had been violated; nothing recorded, against its 
will, of any family, but what was inevitably known of 
its publicly visible conduct, and the results of that con- 
duct. What else was written should be only by the 
desire, and from the communications, of its head. And 
in a little while it would come to be felt that the true 
history of a nation was indeed not of its wars, but of its 
households; and the desire of men would rather be to 

obtain some conspicuous place in these honourable 

4* 



82 TIME A]STD TIDE. 

annals, than to shrink behind closed shutters from pub- 
lic sight. Until at last, George Herbert's grand word 
of command would hold not only on the conscience, but 
the actual system and outer economy of life, 

"Think the King sees thee still, for his King does." 

Secondly, above these bishops or pastors, who are only 
to be occupied in offices of familiar supervision and help, 
should be appointed higher officers of State, having 
executive authority over as large districts as might be 
conveniently (according to the number and circumstances 
of their inhabitants) committed to their care; officers, 
who, according to the reports of the pastors, should 
enforce or mitigate the operation of too rigid general 
law, and determine measures exceptionally necessary 
for public advantage. For instance, the general law 
being that all children of the operative classes, at a cer- 
tain age, should be sent to public schools, these superior 
officers should have power, on the report of the pastors, 
to dispense with the attendance of children who had 
sick parents to take charge of, or whose home-life seemed 
to be one of better advantage for them than that of the 
common schools ; or who for any other like cause might 
justifiably claim remission. And it being the general 
law that the entire body of the public should contribute 



LETTER XIII. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM. 83 

to the cost, and divide the profits, of all necessary public 
works and undertakings, as roads, mines, harbour pro 
tections, and the like, and that nothing of this kind 
6hould be permitted to be in the hands of private specu* 
lators, it should be the duty of the district officer to col- 
lect whatever information was accessible respecting such 
sources of public profit; and to represent the circum- 
stances in Parliament: and then, with parliamentary 
authority, but on his own sole personal responsibility, 
to see that such enterprises were conducted honestly, 
and with due energy and order. 

The appointment to both these offices should be by 
election, and for life ; by what forms of election shall be 
matter of inquiry, after we have determined some others 
of the necessary constitutional laws. 

I do not doubt but that you are already beginning to 
think it was with good reason I held my peace these 
fourteen years, — and that, for any good likely to be done 
by speaking, I might as well have held it altogether ! 

It may be so: but merely to complete and explain 
my own work, it is necessary that I should say these 
things finally ; and I believe that the imminent danger 
to which we are now in England exposed by the gradu- 
ally accelerated fall of our aristocracy (wholly their own 
fault), and the substitution of money-power for then 



84 TIME AND TIDE. 

martial one; and oy the correspondent^ imminent pre v 
alence of mob-violence here, as in America ; together 
with the continually increasing chances of insane *ar, 
founded on popular passion, whether of pride, fear, or 
acquisitiveness, — all these dangers being further dark- 
ened and degraded by the monstrous forms of vice and 
selfishness which the appliances of recent wealth, and 
of vulgar mechanical art, make possible to the million, — 
will soon bring us into a condition in which men will be 
glad to listen to almost any words but those of a dema- 
gogue, and to seek any means of safety rather than those 
in which they have lately trusted. So, with your good 
leave, I will say my say to the end, mock at it who 
may. 

P.S. — I take due note of the regulations of trade pro- 
posed in your letter just received* — all excellent. I 
shall come to them presently, u Cash payment " above 
all. You may write that on your trade-banners in let- 
ters of gold, wherever you would haye them raised 
victoriously. 

* Appendix 8. 



fetter 14. 

The First Group of Essential Laws. — Against Theft by 
False WorJc, and by Bankruptcy. — Necessary Public- 
ity of Accounts. 

March 26, 1867. 
I feel much inclined to pause at this point, to answer 
the kind of questions and objections which I know must 
be rising in your mind, respecting the authority supposed 
to be lodged in the persons of the officers just specified. 
But I can neither define, nor justify to you, the powers I 
would desire to see given to them, till I state to you the 
kind of laws they would have to enforce : of which the 
first group should be directed to the prevention of all 
kinds of thieving ; but chiefly of the occult and polite 
methods of it ; and, of all occult methods, chiefly, the 
making and selling of bad goods. No form of theft is so 
criminal as this — none so deadly to the State. If you 
break into a man's house and steal a hundred pounds' 
worth of plate, he knows his loss, and there is an end 
(besides that you take your risk of punishment for youi 



86 TIME A^D TIDE. 

gain, like a man). And if you do it bravely and openly, 
and habitually live by such inroad, you may retain nearly 
every moral and manly virtue, and become a heroic rider 
and reiver, and hero of song. But if you swindle me out 
of twenty shillings'-worth of quality, on each of a hun- 
dred bargains, I lose my hundred pounds all the same, 
and I get a hundred untrustworthy articles besides, which 
will fail me and injure me in all manner of ways, when 
I least expect it ; and you, having done your thieving 
basely, are corrupted by the guilt of it to the very heart's 
core. 

This is the first thing, therefore, which your general 
laws must be set to punish, fiercely, immitigably, to the 
utter prevention and extinction of it, or there is no hope 
for you. No religion that ever was preached on this 
earth of God's rounding, ever proclaimed any salvation 
to sellers of bad goods. If the Ghost that is in you, 
whatever the essence of it, leaves your hand a juggler's, 
and your heart a cheat's, it is not a Holy Ghost, be 
assured of that. And for the rest, all political economy, 
as well as all higher virtue, depends first on sound work. 

Let your laws then, I say, in the beginning, be set to 
secure this. You cannot make punishment too stern for 
subtle knavery. Keep no truce with this enemy, what- 
ever pardon you extend to more generous ones. For 



LETTER XIV. TRADE-WARRANT. 87 

lightweights and false measures, or for proved adultera- 
tion or dishonest manufacture of article, the penalty 
should be simply confiscation of goods and sending out 
of the country. The kind of person who desires prosper- 
ity by such practices, could not be made to " emigrate 5J 
too speedily. What to do with him in the place you ap- 
pointed to be blessed by his presence, we will in time 
consider. 

Under such penalty, however, and yet more under the 
pressure of such a right public opinion as could pro- 
nounce and enforce such penalty, I imagine that sham 
articles would become speedily as rare as sound ones are 
now. The chief difficulty in the matter would be to 
fix your standard. This would have to be done by the 
guild of every trade in its own manner, and within cer- 
tain easily recognizable limits ; and this fixing of standard 
would necessitate much simplicity in the forms and kinds 
of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind 
of glazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leath- 
er or cloth, bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined 
mixture of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties 
in manufacture would have to be examined and accepted 
by the trade guild : when so accepted, they would be an- 
nounced in public reports; and all puffery and self-procla- 
mation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden, 



88 TIME AND TIDE. 

as much as the making of any other kind of noise or dis 
turbance. 

"But observe, this law is only to have force over trades- 
men whom I suppose to have joined voluntarily in carry- 
ing out a better system of commerce. Outside of theii 
guild, they would have to leave the rogue to puff and 
cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they 
chose. All that is necessary is that the said public 
should clearly know the shops in which they could get 
warranted articles ; and, as clearly, those in which they 
bought at their own risk. 

And the above-named penalty of confiscation of goods 
should of course be enforced only against dishonest mem- 
bers of the trade guild. If people chose to buy of those 
who had openly refused to join an honest society, they 
should be permitted to do so at their pleasure and peril : 
and this for two reasons ; the first, that it is always 
necessary, in enacting strict law, to leave some safety 
valve for outlet of irrepressible vice (nearly all the stern 
lawgivers of old time erred by oversight in this ; so that 
the morbid elements of the State, which it should be 
allowed to get rid of in a cutaneous and openly curable 
manner, were thrown inwards, and corrupted its constitu- 
tion, and broke all down) ; the second, that operations of 
trade and manufacture conducted under and guarded by 



LETTER XIV. — TRADE-WARRAOT. 89 

severe law, ought always to be subject to the stimulus of 
such erratic external ingenuity as cannot be tested by 
law, or would be hindered from its full exercise by the 
dread of it ; not to speak of the farther need of extending 
all possible indulgence to foreign traders who might wish 
to exercise their industries here without liability to the 
surveillance of our trade guilds. 

Farther, while for all articles warranted by the guild 
(as above supposed) the prices should be annually fixed 
for the trade throughout the kingdom ; and the producing 
workmen's wages fixed, so as to define the master's profits 
within limits admitting only such variation as the nature 
of the given article of sale rendered inevitable; — yet, in 
the production of other classes of articles, whether by 
skill of applied handicraft, or fineness of material above 
the standard of the guild, attaining, necessarily, values 
above its assigned prices, every firm should be left free to 
make its own independent efforts and arrangements with 
its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if it 
could be proved to have consistently described or offered 
anything to the public for what it was not : and finally, 
the state of the affairs of every firm should be annually 
reported to the guild, and its books laid open to inspec- 
tion, for guidance in the regulation of prices in the subse- 
quent year ; and any firm whose liabilities exceeded its 



90 TIME ASTD TIDE. 

assets by a hundred pounds should be forthwith declared 
bankrupt. And I will anticipate what I have to say in 
succeeding letters so far as to tell you that I would have 
this condition extend to every firm in the country, large 
or small, and of whatever rank in business. And thus 
you perceive, my friend, I shall not have to trouble you 
or myself much with deliberations respecting commercial 
" panics," nor to propose legislative cures for them, by 
any laxatives or purgatives of paper currency, or any 
other change of pecuniary diet. 



fetter 15. 

'The !fc*iure of Theft by Unjust Profits. — Crime com 
fitJhlly be arrested only by Education. 

29th March. 

The first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest 
manufacture, and by debt ? of which we have been hith- 
erto speaking, are easily enough to be dealt with and 
ended, when once men ha ye a mind to end them. But 
the third method of polite robbery 7 by dishonest acquisi- 
tion^ has many branches, and is involved among honest 
arts of acquisition, so that it is difficult to repress the one 
without restraining the other. 

Observe, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made 
by the work of one man's hands or head. If his work 
benefits multitudes, and involves position of high trust, 
it may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to reward 
him with great wealth or estate ; but fortune of this kind 
is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment 
for labour. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, il 
the public can enjoy the product of their genius, may set 



92 TIME AKD TIDE. 

it at almost any price they choose; but this, I will show 
yon when I come to speak of art, is unlawful on their 
part, and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must not 
be sold ; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but 
perfectly true sense, the guilt both of simony and prosti- 
tution Your labour only may be sold ; your soul must 
not, 

Now, by fair pay for fair labour, according to the rank 
of it, a man can obtain means of comfortable, or if he 
needs it, refined life. But he cannot obtain large fortune. 
Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce can be 
made only in one of three ways : — 

1. By obtaining command over the labour of multi- 
tudes of other men, and taxing it for our own profit. 

2. By treasure-trove, — as of mines, useful vegetable 
products, and the like, — in circumstances putting them 
under our own exclusive control. 

3. By speculation (commercial gambling). 

The two first of these means of obtaining riches are, 
in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, and 
advantageous to the State. The third is entirely det- 
rimental to it ; for in all cases of profit derived from 
speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses ; 
and the net result to the State is zero (pecuniarily), with 
the loss of the time and ingenuity spent in the transac- 



LETTER XV. rER-CENTAGE. 93 

tion; besides the disadvantage involved in the discour- 
agement of the losing party, and the corrupted moral 
natures of both. This is the result of speculation at its 
best. At its worst, not only B. loses what A. gains 
(having taken his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance 
of gain), but 0. and D., who never had any chance at 
all, are drawn in by B.'s fall, and the final result is 
that A. sets up his carriage on the collected sum which 
was once the means of living to a dozen families. 

Nor is this all. For while real commerce is founded 
on real necessities or uses, and limited by these, specula- 
tion, of which the object is merely gain, seeks to excite 
imaginary necessities and popular desires, in order to 
gather its temporary profit from the supply of them. So 
that not only the persons who lend their money to it will 
be finally robbed, but the work done with their money 
will be for the most part useless, and thus the entire body 
of the public injured as well as the persons concerned in 
the transaction. Take, for instance, the architectural 
decorations of railways throughout the kingdom, — repre- 
senting many millions of money for which no farthing of 
dividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not 
be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to 
Rochester or Dover because the ironwork of the bridge 
which carries them over the Thames is covered with floral 



94 TIME AOT> TIDE. 

cockades, and the piers of it edged with ornamental 
cornices. All that work is simply put there by th« 
builders that they may put the per-centage upon it into 
their own pockets ; and, the 'rest of the money befng 
thrown into that floral form, there is an end of it, as far 
as the shareholders are concerned. Millions npon mil- 
lions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, 
on ornamental arrangements of zigzag bricks, black and 
blue tiles, cast-iron foliage, and the like ; of which mil- 
xions, as I said, not a penny can ever return into the 
shareholders' pockets, nor contribute to public speed or 
safety on the line. It is all sunk forever in ornamental 
architecture, and (trust me for this !) all that architecture 
is bad. As such, it had incomparably better not have 
been built. Its only result will be to corrupt what 
capacity of taste or right pleasure in such work we have 
yet left to us ! And consider a little, what other kind of 
result than that might have been attained if all those 
millions had been spent usefully : say, in buying land for 
the people, or building good houses for them, or (if it had 
been imperatively required to be spent decoratively) in 
laying out gardens and parks for them, — or buying noble 
works of art for their permanent possession, — or, best of 
all, establishing frequent public schools and libraries! 
Count what those lost millions would have so accom- 



LETTER XV. PER-CENTAGE. 95 

plished for you ! But you left the affair to " supplj and 
demand," and the British public had not brains enough to 
" demand " land, or lodging, or books. It " demanded " 
cast-iron cockades and zigzag cornices, and is "supplied" 
with them, to its beatitude for ever more. 

Now, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of work- 
manship or material, is, indeed, so far worse than these 
thefts by dishonest acquisition, that there is no possible 
excuse for it on the ground of self-deception ; while many 
speculative thefts are committed by persons who really 
mean to do no harm, but think the system on the whole 
a fair one, and do the best they can in it for themselves. 
But in the real fact of the crime, when consciously 
committed, in the numbers reached by its injury, in the 
degree of suffering it causes to those whom it ruins, in 
the baseness of its calculated betrayal of implicit trust,in 
the yet more perfect vileness of the obtaining such trust 
by misrepresentation, only that it may be betrayed, and 
in the impossibility that the crime should be at all com- 
mitted, except by persons of good position and large 
knowledge of the world, — what manner of theft is so 
wholly unpardonable, so inhuman, so contrary to every 
law and instinct which binds or animates society ! 

And then consider farther, how many of the carriages 
th^ft glitter in our streets are driven, and how many of 



tft> TIME ANT> TIDE. 

the stately houses that gleam among our English fields 
are inhabited by this kind of thief! 

I happened to be reading this morning (29th March) 
some portions of the Lent services, and I came to a pause 
over the familiar words, " And with Him they crucified 
two thieves." Have you ever considered (I speak to you 
now as a professing Christian), why, in the accomplish- 
ment of the " numbering among transgressors," the trans- 
gressors chosen should have been especially thieves — not 
murderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross 
violence? Do you observe how the sin of theft is again 
and again indicated as the chiefly antagonistic one to the 
law of Christ % " This he said, not that he cared for 
the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the 
bag" (of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a 
leader of sedition, and a murderer besides — (that the 
popular election might be in all respects perfect) — yet St. 
John, in curt and conclusive account of him, fastens again 
on the theft. " Then cried they all again saying, Not this 
man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." I 
believe myself the reason to be that theft is indeed, in its 
subtle forms, the most complete and excuseless of human 
crimes. Sins of violence usually have passion to excuse 
them : they may be the madness of moments ; or they 
may be apparently the only means of extrication fifcm 



BETTER XV. PER-CENTAGE. 97 

calamity. In other cases, they are the diseased habits of 
lower and brutified natures. But theft involving delibera- 
tive intellect, and absence of passion, is the purest type 
of wilful iniquity, in persons capable of doing right. 
Which being so, it seems to be fast becoming the practice 
of modern societ} 7 to crucify its Christ indeed, as will- 
ingly as ever, in the persons of His poor; but by no 
means now to crucify its thieves beside Him! It ele- 
vates its thieves after another fashion ; sets them upon an 
hill, that their light may shine before men, and that all 
may see their good works, and glorify their Father, in — 
the Opposite of Heaven. 

I think your trade parliament will have to put an end 
to this kind of business somehow! But it cannot be 
done by laws merely, where the interests and circum- 
stances are so extended and complex. Nay, even as 
regards lower and more defined crimes, the assigned 
punishment is not to be thought of as a preventive 
means ; but only as the seal of opinion set by society on 
the fact. Crime cannot be hindered by punishment ; it 
will always find some shape and outlet, unpunishable or 
unclosed. Crime can only be truly hindered by letting 
no man grow up a criminal — by taking away the will 
to commit sin ; not by mere punishment of its com- 
mission. Crime, small and great, can only be truly stayed 

5 



98 TIME AND TIDE. 

by education — not the education of the intellect only ; 
which is, on some men, wasted, and for others mischie- 
vous ; but education of the heart, which is alike good and 
necessary for all. So, on this matter, I will try to say 
one or two things of which the silence has kept my own 
neart heavy this many a day, in my next letter. 



Cctter IB. 

Of Public Education irrespective of Class-distinction. — 
It consists essentially in giving Habits of Mercy, and 
Habits of Truth. 

March 30, 1867. 
Thank you for sending me the pamphlet containing 
the account of the meeting of clergy and workmen, 
and of the reasonings which there took place. I cannot 
promise you that I shall read much of them, for the 
question to my mind most requiring discussion and 
explanation is not, why workmen don't go to church, 
but — why other people do. However, this I know, 
that if, among our many spiritual teachers, there are 
indeed any frho heartily and literally believe that the 
wisdom they have to teach, " is more precious than 
rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to 
be compared unto her," and if, so believing, they will 
further dare to affront their congregations by the asser- 
tion; and plainly tell them they are not to hunt for 
rubies or gold any more, at their peril, till they have 
gained that which cannot be gotten for gold, nor silver 



100 TIME AND TIDE. 

weighed for the price thereof, — such believers, so preach- 
ing, and refusing to preach otherwise till they are in 
that attended to, will never want congregations, both of 
working men, and every other kind of men. 

Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as 
the phantom called the "Philosopher's" Stone? A 
talisman that shall turn base metal into precious metal, 
nature acknowledges not; nor would any but fools 
seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into 
noble souls, nature has given us ! and that is a " Philo- 
sopher's" Stone indeed, but it is a stone which the 
builders refuse. 

If there were two valleys in California or Australia, 
with two different kinds of gravel in the bottom ol 
them ; and in the one stream bed you could dig up, 
occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold ; and 
in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, 
you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans 
which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster 
vases of precious balms, which were better than the 
Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the 
eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would 
— I wonder in which of the stream beds there would 
be most diggers? 

" Time is money " — so say your practised merchants 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 101 

and economists. None of them, however, I fancy, as 
they draw towards death, find that the reverse is true 
and that "money is time"? Perhaps it might be better 
for them in the end if they did not turn so much of 
their time into money, as no re-transformation is possible i 
There are other things, however, which in the same 
sense are money, or can be changed into it, as well 
as time. Health is money, wit is money, knowledge is 
money; and all your health, and wit, and knowledge 
may be changed for gold ; and the happy goal so reached, 
of a sick, insane, and blind, auriferous old age ; but 
the gold cannot be changed in its turn back into health 
and wit. 

" Time is money," the words tingle in my ears so that 
I can't go on writing. Is it nothing better, then ? If we 
could thoroughly understand that time was — itself] — 
would it not be more to the purpose ? A thing of which 
loss or gain was absolute loss, and perfect gain. And 
that it was expedient also to buy health and knowledge 
with money, if so purchaseable ; but not to buy money 
with them ? 

And purchaseable they are, at the beginning of life, 
though not at its close. Purchaseable, always, for others, 
if not for ourselves. You can buy, and cheaply, life, 
endless life, according to your Christian's creed- -(there's 



102 TIME ASTD TIDE. 

a bargain for you!) but — long years of knowledge, and 
peace, and power, and happiness of love — these assuredly, 
and irrespectively of any creed or question — for all those 
desolate and haggard children about your streets. 

"That is not political economy, however. 55 Pardon 
me ; the all-comfortable saying, " "What he layeth out, it 
shall be paid him again, 55 is quite literally true in matters 
of education ; no money-seed can be sown with so sure 
and large return at harvest-time as that ; only of this 
money-seed, more than of flesh-seed, it is utterly true, 
" That which thou sow^est is not quickened, except it dieP 
Tou must forget your money, and every other material 
interest, and educate for education's sake only ! or the 
very good you try to bestow will become venomous, and 
that and your money will be lost together. 

And this has been the real cause of failure in our efforts 
for education hitherto — whether from above or below. 
There is no honest desire for the thing itself. The cry 
for it among the lower orders is because they think that, 
when once they have got it, they must become upper 
orders. There is a strange notion in the mob 5 s mind, 
now-a-days (including all our popular economists and 
educators, as we most justly may, under that brief term, 
" mob 55 ), that everybody can be uppermost ; or at least, 
that a state of general scramble, in which everybody in 



LETTER XVI. — EDUCATION. 103 

his turn should come to the top, is a proper Utopian con- 
stitution ; and that, once give every lad a good education, 
and he cannot but come to ride in his carriage (the 
methods of supply of coachmen and footmen not being 
contemplated). And very sternly I say to you — and 
say from sure knowledge — that a man had better not 
know how to read or write, than receive education on 
such terms. 

The first condition under which it can be given use- 
fully is, that it should be clearly understood to be no 
means of getting on in the world, but a means of staying 
pleasantly in your place there. And the first elements 
of State education should be calculated equally for the 
advantage of every order of person composing the State. 
From the lowest to the highest class, every child born in 
this island should be required by law to receive these 
general elements of human discipline, and to be baptized 
— not with a drop of water on its forehead — but in the 
cloud and sea of heavenly wisdom and of earthly power. 

And the elements of this general State education 
should be briefly these : 

First. — The body must be made as beautiful and per 
feet in its youth as it can be, wholly irrespective of 
ulterior purpose. If you mean afterwards to set the 
creature to business which will degrade its body and 



104 TIME AND TIDE. 

shorten its life, first, I should say, simply, — you had bet- 
ter let such business alone; — but if you must have "t 
done, somehow, yet let the living creature whom you 
mean to kill, get the full strength of its body first, and 
taste the joy, and bear the beauty of youth. After that, 
poison it, if you will. Economically, the arrangement is 
a wiser one, for it will take longer in the killing than if 
you began with it younger ; and you will get an excess 
of work out of it which will more than pay for its train- 
ing. 

Therefore, first teach — as I said in the preface to Unto 
this Last — " The Laws of Health, and exercises enjoined 
by them ; " and to this end your schools must be in fresh 
country, and amidst fresh air, and have great extents of 
land attached to them in permanent estate. Riding, run- 
ning, all the honest personal exercises of offence and 
defence, and music, should be the primal heads of this 
bodily education. 

Next to these bodily accomplishments, the two great 
mental graces should be taught, Reverence and Compas- 
sion : not that these are in a literal sense to be " taught," 
for they are innate in every well-born human creature, 
but they have to be developed, exactly as the strength of 
the body must be, by deliberate and constant exercise. I 
never understood why Goethe (in the plan of education 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 105 

in Wilhelm Meister) says that reverence is not innate, 
but must be taught from without ; it seems to me so 
fixedly a function of the human spirit, that if men can 
get nothing else to reverence they will worship a fool, or 
a stone, or a vegetable.* But to teach reverence rightly 
is to attach it to the right persons and things ; first, by 
setting over your youth masters whom they cannot but 
love and respect ; next, by gathering for them, out of 
past history, whatever has been most worthy, in human 
deeds and human passion ; and leading them continually 
to dwell upon such instances, making this the principal 
element of emotional excitement to them ; and, lastly, by 
letting them justly feel, as far as may be, the smallness 
of their own powers and knowledge, as compared with 
the attainments of others. 

Compassion, on the other hand, is to be taught chiefly 
by making it a point of honour, collaterally with courage, 
and in the same rank (as indeed the complement end 
evidence of courage), so that, in the code of unwritten 
school law, it shall be held as shameful to have done a 
cruel thing as a cowardly one. All infliction of pain on 
weaker creatures is to be stigmatized as unmanly crime ; 

* By steadily preaching against it, one may quench reverence, 

and bring insolence to its height ; but the instinct cannot be wt ollj 

uprooted. 

5* 



106 TIME AND TIDE. 

and every possible opportunity taken to exercise the 
youths in offices of some practical help, and to acquaint 
them with the realities of the distress which, in the joy- 
fulness of entering into life, it is so difficult for those 
^ho have not seen home suffering, to conceive. 

Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach pri- 
marily, and with these, as the bond and guardian of 
them, truth of spirit and word, of thought and sight. 
Truth, earnest and passionate, sought for like a treasure 
and kept like a crown. 

This teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief 
work the master has to do ; and it will enter into all parts 
of education. First, you must accustom the children to 
close accuracy of statement ; this both as a principle of 
honour, and as an accomplishment of language, making 
them try always who shall speak truest, both as regards 
the fact he has to relate or express (not concealing or 
exaggerating), and as regards the precision of the words 
he expresses it in, thus making truth (which, indeed, it 
is) the test of perfect language, and giving the intensity 
of a moral purpose to the study and art of words : then 
carrying this accuracy into all habits of thought and 
observation also, so as always to think of things as they 
truly are, and to see them as they truly are, as far as in 
us rests. And it does rest much in oui power, for all 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 107 

false thoughts and seeings come mainly of our thinking 
of what we have no business with, and looking for things 
we want to see, instead of things that ought to be seen. 

" Do not talk but of what you know ; do not think 
but of what you have materials to think justly upon ; 
and do not look for things only that you like, when there 
are others to be seen " — this is the lesson to be taught to 
our youth, and inbred in them ; and that mainly by our 
own example and continence. Never teach a child any- 
thing of which you are not j^ourself sure ; and, above all, 
if you feel anxious to force anything into its mind in 
tender years, that the virtue of youth and early associa- 
tion may fasten it there, be sure it is no lie which you 
thus sanctify. There is always more to be taught of 
absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, open to its capacity, 
than any child can learn ; there is no need to teach it 
anything doubtful. Better that it should be ignorant of 
a thousand truths, than have consecrated in its heart a 
single lie. 

And for this, as well as for many other reasons, the 
principal subjects of education, after history, ought to be 
natural science and mathematics; but with respect to 
these studies, your schools will require to be divided into 
three groups ; one for children who will probably have to 
live in cities, one for those who will live in the country, 



108 TIME AND TIDE. 

and one for those who will live at sea ; the schools foi 
these last, of course, being always placed on the coast. 
And for children whose life is to be in cities, the subjects 
of study should be, as far as their disposition will allow 
of it, mathematics and the arts ; for children who are to 
live in the country, natural history of birds, insects, and 
plants, together with agriculture taught practically ; and 
for children who are to be seamen, physical geography, 
astronomy, and the natural history of sea fish and sea 
birds. 

This, then, being the general course and material of 
education for all children, observe farther that in the 
preface to Unto this Last I said that every child, besides 
passing through this course, was at school to learn " the 
calling by which it was to live." And it may perhaps 
appear to you that after, or even in the early stages of 
education such as this above described, there are many 
callings which, however much called to them, the chil- 
dren might not willingly determine to learn or live by. 
" Probably," you may say, " after they have learned to 
ride, and fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers, it 
will be little to their liking to make themselves into tai- 
lors, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like." 
.And I cannot but agree with you as to the exceeding 
probability of some such reluctance on their part, which 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 109 

will be a very awkward state of things indeed (since we 
can by no means get on without tailoring and shoemak- 
ing), and one to be meditated upon very seriously in next 
letter. 

P.S. — Thank you for sending me your friend's letter 
about Gustave Dore ; he is wrong, however, in thinking 
there is any good in those illustrations of Elaine. I had 
intended to speak of them afterwards, for it is to my 
mind quite as significant — almost as awful — a sign of 
what is going on in the midst of us, that our great Eng- 
lish poet should have suffered his work to be thus con- 
taminated, as that the lower Evangelicals, never notable 
for sense in the arts, should have got their Bibles dishon- 
oured. Those Elaine illustrations are just as impure as 
anything else that Dore has done; bat they are also 
vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of 
art. The illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques are full 
of power and invention; but those to Elaine are merely 
and simply stupid; theatrical b^tises, with the taint of 
the charnel-house on them besides. 



fetter 17. 

The Relations of Education to Position m Life. 

ApiU 3,1807. 
I am not quite sure that you will feel the awkwardness 

of the dilemma I got into at the end of last letter, as 
much as I do myself. Tou working men have been 
crowing and peacocking at such a rate lately ; and set- 
ting yourselves forth so confidently for the cream of 
society, and the top of the world, that perhaps you will 
not anticipate any of the difficulties which suggest them- 
selves to a thorough-bred Tory and Conservative, like me. 
Perhaps you will expect a youth properly educated — a 
good rider — musician — and well-grounded scholar in nat- 
ural philosophy, to think it a step of promotion when he 
has to go and be made a tailor of, or a coalheaver ? If 
you do, I should very willingly admit that you might be 
right, and go on to the farther development of my notions 
v> ithout pausing at this stumbling-block, were it not that, 
unluckily, all the wisest men whose sayings I ever heard 
or read, agree in expressing (one way or another) just 



LETTER XVn. DIFFICULTIES. Ill 

such contempt, for those useful occupations, as I dread 
on the part of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakspeare 
and Chaucer, — Dante and Yirgil, — Horace and Pindar, — 
Homer, JEschylus, and Plato, — all the men of any age or 
country who seem to have had Heaven's music on theii 
lips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine 
that the feeling of prudent Englishmen, and sensible as 
well as sensitive Englishwomen, on reading my last letter 
— would mostly be — " Is the man mad, or laughing at us, 
to propose educating the working classes this way ? He 
could not, if his wild scheme were possible, find a better 
method of making them acutely wretched." 

It may be so, my sensible and polite friends ; and I am 
heartily willing, as well as curious, to hear you develope 
your own scheme of operative education, so only that 
it be universal, orderly, and careful. I do not say that I 
shall be prepared to advocate my athletics and philos- 
ophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or imply, 
in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You 
imply that a certain portion of mankind must be em- 
ployed in degrading work ; and that, to fit them for this 
work, it is necessary to limit their knowledge, their active 
powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood upwards, 
so that they may not be able to conceive of any state 
better than the one they were born in, nor possess any 



112 TIME AST) TIDE. 

knowledge or acquirements inconsistent with the coarse- 
ness, or disturbing the monotony, of their vulgar occupa 

tion. And by their labour in this contracted state of mind, 
we superior beings are to be maintained; and always to be 
curtsied to by the properly ignorant little girls, and capped 
by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by. 

Hind, I do not say that this is not the right state of 
things. Only, if it be. you need not be so over-particular 
about the slave-trade, it seems to me. ^fVTiat is the use 
of arguing so pertinaci msly that a black's skull will hold 
as much as a white's, when you a e declaring in the same 
breath that a white's skull must i ot hold as much as it 
can, or it will be the worse for him? It does not appear 
to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped 
into doing a piece of low work that I don't like ; but 
it is a very profound state of slavery, to be kept, my- 
self, low in the forehead, that I may not dislike low 
work. 

You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward 
one, whichever way you look at it. But, what is still 
worse, I am not puzzled only, at this part of my scheme, 
about the boys I shall have to make workmen of; I am 
just as much puzzled about the boys I shall have to make 
nothing of! Grant, that by hook or crook, by reason or 
rattan, I persuade a certain number of the roughest ones 






LETTER XVH. — DIFFICULTIES. 113 

into some serviceable business, and get coats and shoes 
made for tlie rest, — what is the business of " the rest " to 
be ? Naturally, according to the existing state of things, 
one supposes they are to belong to some of the gentle 
manly professions ; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or 
clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers, of 
special skill or pugnacity ? All my boys will be soldiers, 
So far from wanting any lawyers, of the kind that live by 
talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to 
their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall 
always entertain a profound respect; but when I get 
my athletic education fairly established, of what help to 
them will my respect be ? They will all starve ! And 
for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a large number 
of episcopates — one over every hundred families — (and 
m^ny positions of civil authority also, for civil officers, 
above them and below), but all these places will involve 
much hard work, and be anything but covetable ; while, 
of clergymen's usual work, admonition, theological dem- 
onstration, and the like, I shall want very little done 
indeed, and that little done for nothing ! for I will allow 
no man to admonish anybody, until he has previously 
earned his own dinner by more productive work than 
admonition. 

Well, I wish, my friend, you would write me a word ot 



114 TIME AND TIDE. 

two in answer to this, telling me your own ideas as to the 
proper issue out of these difficulties. I should like to 
know what you think, and what you suppose others will 
think, before I tell you my own notions about the matter. 



fetter 13. 

The harmful Effects of Servile Employments.' — The pos- 
sible Practice and Exhibition of sincere Humility by 
Religiws Persons. 

April 7, 1867. 
I have been waiting these three days to know what 
yon would say to my last questions ; and now you send 
me two pamphlets of Combe's to read! I never read 
anything in spring-time (except the Ai, Ai, on the " san- 
guine flower inscribed with woe ") ; and besides if, as I 
gather from your letter, Combe thinks that among well- 
educated boys there would be a per-centage constitution- 
ally inclined to be cobblers, or looking forward with 
unction to establishment in the oil and tallow line, or 
fretting themselves for a flunkey's uniform, nothing that 
he could say would make me agree with him. I know, as 
well as he does, the unconquerable differences in the clay 
of the human creature : and I know that, in the outset, 
whatever system of education you adopted, a large num- 
ber of children could be made nothing of, and would 
necessarily fall out of the ranks, and supply candidates 



116 TIME AND TIDE. 

enough for degradation to common mechanical business . 
but this enormous difference in bodily and mental capac 
ity has been mainly brought about by difference in occu 
pati on, and by direct mal-treatment ; and in a few 
generations, if the poor were cared for, their marriages 
looked after, and sanitary law enforced, a beautiful type 
of face and form, and a high intelligence, would become 
all but universal, in a climate like this of England. Even 
as it is, the marvel is always to me, how the race resists, 
at least in its childhood, influences of ill-regulated birth, 
poisoned food, poisoned air, and soul, neglect. I often 
see faces of children, as I walk through the black district 
of St. Giles's (lying, as it does, just between my own 
house and the British Museum), which, through all their 
pale and corrupt misery, recall the old " Non Angli," and 
recall it, not by their beauty, but by their sweetness of 
expression, even though signed already with trace and 
cloud of the coming life,— a life so bitter that it would 
make the curse of the 137th Psalm true upon our modern 
Babylon, though we were to read it thus, " Happy shall 
thy children be, if one taketh and dasheth them against 
the stones." 

Yes, very solemnly I repeat to you that in those worst 
treated children of the English race, I yet see the mak- 
ing of gentlemen and gentlewomen — not the making of 



LETTER XVIII. HUMILITY. 117 

dog-stealers &nd gin-drinkers, such as their parents were ; 
and the child of the average English tradesman or 
peasant, even at this day, well schooled, will show no 
innate disposition such as must fetter him for ever to 
lie clod or the counter. You say that many a boy 
runs away, or would run away if he could, from good 
positions to go to sea. Of course he does. I never 
said I should have any difficulty in finding sailors, but 
I shall in finding fishmongers. I am at no loss for 
gardeners neither, but what am I to do for greengrocers ? 
The fact is, a great number of quite necessary em 
ployments are, in the accuratest sense, " servile," that 
is, they sink a man to the condition of a serf, or un- 
thinking worker, the proper state of an animal, but 
more or less unworthy of men; nay, unholy in some 
sense, so that a day is made " holy " by the fact of 
its being commanded, " Thou shalt do no servile work 
therein." And yet, if undertaken in a certain spirit, 
such work might be the holiest of all. If there were 
but a thread or two of sound fibre here and there left in 
our modern religion, so that the stuff of it would bear a 
real strain, one might address our two opposite groups 
of evangelicals and ritualists somewhat after this fashion: 
— "Good friends, these differences of opinion between 
yro cannot but be painful to your Christian charity, 



118 TIME AND TIDE. 

and they are unseemly to us, the profane; and prevent 
us from learning from you what, perhaps, we ought. 
But, as we read your Book, we, for our part, gathel 
from it that you might, without danger to your own 
souls, set an undivided example to us, for the benefit 
of ours. You, both of you, as far as we understand, 
agree in the necessity of humility to the perfection of 
your character. We often hear you, of Calvinistic per- 
suasion, speaking of yourselves as 'sinful dust and 
ashes,' — would it then be inconsistent with your feelings 
to make yourselves into 'serviceable' dust and ashes? 
We observe that of late many of our roads have been 
hardened and mended with cinders; now, if, in a higher 
sense, you could allow us to mend the roads of the world 
with you a little, it would be a great proof to us of 
your sincerity. Suppose only for a little while, in the 
present difficulty and distress, you were to make it a 
test of conversion that a man should regularly give 
Zacheus's portion, half his goods, to the poor, and at 
once adopt some disagreeable and despised, but thoroughly 
useful, trade ? You cannot think that this would finally 
De to your disadvantage; you doubtless believe the 
texts, ' He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' 
and 'He that would be the chief among you, let him 
be your servant.' The more you parted with, and the 



LETTER XVm. — HUMILnT. 119 

lower you stooped, the greater would be your final reward 
and final exaltation. Tou profess to despise human 
learning and worldly riches; leave both of these to 
us; undertake for us the illiterate and ill-paid employ- 
ments which must deprive you of the privileges of 
society, and the pleasures of luxury. You cannot pos- 
sibly preach your faith so forcibly to the world by any 
quantity of the finest words, as by a few such simple 
and painful acts ; and over your counters, in honest 
retail business, you might preach a gospel that would 
sound in more ears than any that was ever proclaimed 
over pulpit cushions or tabernacle rails. And, whatever 
may be your gifts of utterance, you cannot but feel 
(studying St. Paul's Epistles as carefully as you do) 
that you might more easily and modestly emulate the 
practical teaching of the silent Apostle of the Gentiles 
than the speech or writing of his companion. Amidst 
the present discomforts of your brethren you may surely, 
with greater prospect of good to them, seek the title 
of Sons of Consolation, than of Sons of Thunder, and 
be satisfied with Barnabas's confession of faith (if you 
can reach no farther), who, ; having land, sold it, and 
brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet.' 

" To you, on the other hand, gentlemen of the embroid- 
ered robe, who neither despise learning nor the arts, we 



120 TIME AND TIDE. 

know that sacrifices such as these would be truly painful, 
and might at first appear inexpedient. But the doctrine 
of self-mortification is not a new one to you: and wa 
should be sorry to think — we would not, indeed, for a 
moment dishonour you by thinking — that these melodious 
chants, and prismatic brightnesses of vitreous pictures, 
and floral graces of deep- wrought stone, were in any wise 
intended for your own poor pleasures, whatever profane 
attraction they may exercise on more fleshly-minded per- 
sons. And as you have certainly received no definite 
order for the painting, carving, or lighting up of churches, 
while the temple of the body of so many poor living 
Christians is so pale, so mis-shapen, and so ill-lighted; 
but have, on the contrary, received very definite orders for 
the feeding and clothing of such sad humanity, we may 
surely ask you, not unreasonably, to humiliate yourselves 
in the most complete way — not with a voluntary, but 
a sternly mvoluntary humility — not with a show of wis- 
dom in will-worship, but with practical wisdom, in all 
honour, to the satisfying of the flesh ; and to associate 
yourselves in monasteries and convents for the better 
practice of useful and humble trades. Do not burn any 
more candles, but mould some ; do not paint any more 
windows, but mend a few, where the wind comes in, in 
winter time, with substantial clear glass and putty. Do 



LETTER XVHI. HUMILIT?. 121 

not vault any more high roofs, but thatch some low ones ; 
and embroider rather on backs which are turned to the 
cold, than only on those which are turned to congrega- 
tions. And you will have your reward afterwards, and 
attain, with all your flocks thus tended, to a place where 
you may have as much gold, and painted glass, and sing- 
ing, as you like." 

Thus much, it seems to me, one might say, with some 
hope of acceptance, to any very earnest member of either 
of our two great religious parties, if, as I say, their faith 
could stand a strain. I have not, however, based any of 
my imaginary political arrangements on the probability 
of its doing so ; and I trust only to such general good 
nature and willingness to help each other, as I presume 
may be found among men of the world; to whom I 
should have to make quite another sort of speech, which 
I will endeavour to set down the heads of, for you, in 
next letter. 



ESTABLISHED 1375, 




Cettcr 10. 

The General Pressi< re of Excessive and Improper Wcr\ 
in English Life. 

April 10, 1867. 
1 caistnot go on to-day with the part of my subject I 
had proposed, for I was disturbed by receiving a letter 
last night, which I herewith enclose to you, and of which 
I wish you to print, here following, the parts I have not 
underlined : — 

1, Phehe-steeet, Chelsea, April 8, 1867. 

My dear R : It is long since you have heard of me, and 

now I ask your patience with me for a little. I have but just re- 
turned from the funeral of my dear, dear friend , the first 

artist friend I made in London — a loved and prized one. For years 
past he had lived in the very humblest way, fighting his battle of 
life against mean appreciation of his talents, the wants of a rising 
family, and frequent attacks of illness, crippling him for months a* a 
time, the wolf at the door meanwhile. 

But about two years since his prospects brightened * * * and 
he had but a few weeks since ventured on removal to a larger house. 
His eldest boy of seventeen years, a very intelligent youth, so 
strongly desired to be a civil engineer that Mr. , not being 



LETTER XIX. BROKEN REEDS. 123 

able to pay the large premium required for his apprenticeship, had 
been made very glad by the consent of Mr. Penn, of Milwall, to re- 
ceive him without a premium after the boy should have spent some 
time at King's College in the study of mechanics. The rest is a sad 

6tory. About a fortnight ago Mr. was taken ill, and died 

last week, the doctors say, of sheer physical exhaustio a, not thirty- 
nine years old, leaving eight young children, and his poor widow 
expecting her confinement, and so weak and ill as to be incapable 
of effort. This youth is the eldest, and the other children range 
downwards to a babe of eighteen months. There is not one who 
knew him, I believe, that will not give cheerfully, to their ability, 
for his widow and children ; but such aid will go but a little way in 
this painful case, but it would be a real boon to this poor widow if 
some of her children could be got into an Orphan Asylum. * * * 
If you are able to do anything I would send particulars of the age 
and sex of the children. * * * 

I remain, dear sir, ever obediently yours, 

Fred. J. Shields. 

P.S. — I ought to say that poor has been quite unable to 

save, with his large family ; and that they would be utterly destitute 
now, but for the kindness of some with whom he was professionally 
connected. 

Now this case, of which you see the entire authentic- 
ity, is, out of the many, of which I hear continually, a 
notably sad one only in so far as the artist in question 
has died of distress while he was catering for the public 



124 TIME AND TIDE. 

amusement. Hardly a week now passes without some 
such misery coming to my knowledge ; and the quantity 
of pain, and anxiety of daily effort, through the best part 
of ]ife, ending all at last in utter grief, which the lower 
middle classes in England are now suffering, is so great 
that I feel constantly as if I were living in one great 
churchyard, with people all round me clinging feebly to 
the edges of the open graves, and calling for help, as they 
fall back into them, out of sight. 

Now I want you to observe here, in a definite case, the 
working of your beautiful modern political economy of 
u supply and demand." Here is a man who could have 
" supplied " you with good and entertaining art — say for 
fifty good years — if you had paid him enough for his day's 
work to find him and his children peacefully in bread. 
But you like having your prints as cheap as possible— 
you triumph in the little that your laugh costs — you take 
all you can get from the man, give the least you can give 
to him — and you accordingly kill him at thirty-nine ; and 
thereafter have his children to take care of, or to kill also, 
whichever you choose : but now, observe, you must take 
care of them for nothing, or not at all ; and what you 
might have had good value for, if you had given it when 
it would have cheered the father's heart, you now can 
have no return for at all, to yourselves ; and what you 



LETTER XIX. BROKEN REEDS. 125 

give to the orphans, if it does not degrade them, at least 
afflicts, coming, not through their father's hand, its honest 
earnings, but from strangers. 

Observe farther, whatever help the orphans may re- 
ceive, will not be from the public at all. It will not be 
from those who profited by their father's labours ; it will 
be chiefly from his fellow-labourers ; or from persons 
whose money would have been beneficially spent in other 
directions, from whence it is drawn away to this need, 
which ought never to have occurred — while those who 
waste their money without doing any service to the 
public, will never contribute one farthing to this distress. 

Now it is this double fault in the help — that it comes 
too late, and that the burden of it falls wholly on those 
who ought least to be charged with it, which would be 
corrected by that institution of overseers of which I spoke 
to you in the twelfth of these letters, saying, you re- 
member, that they were to have farther legal powers, 
which I did not then specify, but which would belong to 
them chiefly in the capacity of public almoners, or help- 
givers, aided by their deacons, the reception of such help, 
in time of true need, being not held disgraceful, but 
honourable ; since the fact of its reception would be sc 
entirely public that no impostor or idle person could evei 
obtain it surreptitiously. 



126 TIME AND TIDE. 

(11th April.) 1 was interrupted yesterday, and I am 
glad of it, for here happens just an instance of the way in 
which the unjust distribution of the burden of charity is 
reflected on general interests ; I cannot help what taint 
of ungracefulness you or other readers of these letters 
may feel that I incur, in speaking, in this instance, of 
myself. If I could speak with the same accurate knowl- 
edge of any one else, most gladly I would ; but I also 
think it right that, whether people accuse me of boasting 
or not, they should know that I practise what I preach. 
I had not intended to say what I now shall, but the 
coming of this letter last night just turns the balance of 
the decision with me. I enclose it with the other ; you 
see it is one from my bookseller, Mr. Quaritch, offering 
me Fischer's work on the Flora of Java, and Latour's on 
Indian Orchidacece, bound together, for twenty guineas. 
Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young 
people, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two 
books very much; but I simply cannot afford to buy 
them, because I sent my last spare twenty guineas to 
Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you 
may think it not the affair of the public that I have not 
this book on Indian flowers, it is their affair finally, that 
what I write for them should be founded on as broad 
knowledge as possible; whatever value my own book 



LETTER XIX — BROKEN REEDS. 127 

may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree 
worth less to them, because of my want of this knowl- 
edge. 

So again — for having begun to speak of myself I will 
do so yet more frankly — I suppose that when people see 
my name down for a hundred pounds to the Cruikshank 
Memorial, and for another hundred to the Eyre Defence 
Fund, they think only that I have more money than I 
know what to do with. Well, the giving of those sub- 
scriptions simply decides the question whether or no I 
shall be able to afford a journey to Switzerland this year, 
in the negative ; and I wanted to go, not only for health's 
sake, but to examine the junctions of the molasse sand- 
stones and nagelfluh with the Alpine limestone, in order 
to complete some notes I meant to publish next spring on 
the geology of the great northern Swiss valley; notes 
which must now lie by me at least for another year ; and 
I believe this delay (though I say it) will be really some- 
thing of a loss to the travelling public, for the little essay 
was intended to explain to them, in a familiar way, the 
real wonderfulness of their favourite mountain, the 
Ttighi ; and to give them some amusement in trying to 
find out where the many-coloured pebbles of it had come 
from. But it is more important that I should, with some 
stoutness, assert my respect for the genius and earnest 



128 TIME AND TIDE. 

patriotism of Cruikshank, and my mich more than (lis 
respect for the Jamaica Committee, than that I should see 
the Alps this year, or get my essay finished next spring ; 
but I tell you the fact, because I want you to feel how. in 
thus leaving their men of worth to be assisted or defended 
only by those who deeply care for them, the public more 
or less cripple, to their own ultimate disadvantage, just 
the people who could serve them in other ways ; while 
the speculators and money-seekers, who are only making 
their profit out of the said public, of course take no part 
in the help of anybody. And even if the willing bearers 
could sustain the burden anywise adequately, none of us 
would complain; but I am certain there is no man, 
whatever his fortune, who is now engaged in any earnest 
offices of kindness to these sufferers, especially of the 
middle class, among his acquaintance, who will not bear 
me witness that for one we can relieve, we must leave 
three to perish. I have left three, myself, in the first 
three months of this year. One was the artist Paul Gray, 
for whom an appeal was made to me for funds to assist 
him in going abroad out of the bitter English winter. 
I hud not the means by me, and he died a week after- 
wards. Another case was that of a widow whose hus- 
band had committed suicide, for whom application was 
made to me at the same time ; and the third was a per 



LETTER XIX.— BROKEN REEDS. 129 

sonal friend, to whom I refused a sum which he said 
would have saved him from bankruptcy. I believe six 
times as much would not have saved him ; however, I 
refused, and he is ruined. 

And observe, also, it is not the mere crippling of my 
means that I regret. It is the crippling of my temper, 
and waste of my time. The knowledge of all this dis- 
tress, even when 1 can assist it, — much more when I can- 
not, — and the various thoughts of what I can and cannot, 
or ought and ought not, to do, are a far greater burden 
to me than the mere loss of the money. It is perempto- 
rily not my business — it is not my gift, bodily or men- 
tally, to look after other people's sorrow. I have enough 
of my own ; and even if I had not, the sight of pain is 
not good for me. I don't want to be a bishop. In a 
most literal and sincere sense, "nolo episcojpari." I don't 
want to be an almoner, nor a counsellor, nor a Member 
of Parliament, nor a voter for Members of Parliament. 
(What would Mr. Holyoake say to me if he knew that 
I have never voted for anybody in my life, and never 
mean to do so !) I am essentially a painter and a leaf 
dissector ; and my powers of thought are all purely mathe- 
matical, seizing ultimate principles only — never accidents ; 
a line is always, to me, length without breadth ; it is 
not a cable or a crowbar; and though I can almost infal- 



130 TIME AND TIDE. 

libly reason out the final law of anything, if within reach 
of my industry, I neither care for, nor can trace, the 
minor exigencies of its daily appliance. So, in ever) 
way, I like a quiet life ; and I don't like seeing people 
cry, or die; and should rejoice, more than I can tell you, 
in giving up the full half of my fortune for the poor, 
provided I knew that the public would make Lord Over- 
stone also give the half of his, and other people who were 
independent give the half of theirs ; and then set men 
who were really fit for such office to administer the fund, 
and answer to us for nobody's perishing innocently; and 
so leave us all to do what we chose with the rest, and 
with our days, in peace. 

Thus far of the public's fault in the matter. Next, I 
have a word or two to say of the sufferers' own fault — for 
much as I pity them, I conceive that none of them dc 
perish altogether innocently. But this must be for next 
letter. 



fetter 20. 

Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Glasses / 
and of the advisable Restrictions of it 

April 12, 1867. 
It is quite as well, whatever irregularity it may intro- 
duce in the arrangement of the general subject, that 
yonder sad letter warped me away from the broad in- 
quiry, to this speciality, respecting the present distress 
of the middle classes. For the immediate cause of that 
distress, in their own imprudence, of which I have to 
speak to you to-day, is only to be finally vanquished by 
strict laws, which, though they have been many a year 
in my mind, I was glad to have a quiet hour of sunshine 
for the thinking over again, this morning. Sunshine 
which happily rose cloudless ; and allowed me to medi- 
tate my tj'rannies before breakfast, under the just-opened 
blossoms of my orchard, and assisted by much melodious 
advice from the birds ; who (my gardener having positive 
orders never to trouble any of them in anything, or object 
to their eating even my best pease if they like their fla- 
vour) rather now get into my way, than out of it, when 



132 TIME AND TIDE. 

they see me about the walks ; and take me into most of 
their counsels in nest-building. 

The letter from Mr. Shields, which interrupted us. 
reached me, as you see, on the evening of the 9th instant 
On the morning of the 10th, I received another, which 1 
herewith forward to you, for verification. It is — character- 
istically enough — dateless, so you must take the time of 
its arrival on my word. And substituting M. N. for the 
name of the boy referred to, and withholding only the 
address and name of the writer, you see that it may be 
printed word for word — as follows : — 

Sir, — May I beg for the favour of your presentation to Christ's 
Hospital for my youngest son, M. N. I have nine children, and no 
means to educate them. I ventured to address you, beUeving that my 
husband's name is not unknown to you as an artist. 

Believe me to remain faithfully yours, 

To John Buskin, Esq. * * * 

Now this letter is only a typical example of the entire 
class of those which, being a governor of Christ's Hospital, 
I receive, in common with all the other governors, at 
a rate of about three a day, for a month or six weeks 
from the date of our names appearing in the printed list 
of the governors who have presentations for the current 
year. Having been a governor now some twenty-five 
years, I have documentary evidence enough to found 



LETTER XX. ROSE- GARDENS. 133 

gome general statistics upon : from which there have 
resulted two impressions on my mind, which I wish here 
specially to note to you, and I do not doubt but that all 
the other governors, if you could ask them, would at once 
confirm what I say. My first impression is, a heavy and 
sorrowful sense of the general feebleness of intellect of 
that portion of the British public which stands in need of 
presentations to Christ's Hospital. This feebleness of 
intellect is mainly shown in the nearly total unconscious- 
ness of the writers that anybody else may want a present- 
ation, beside themselves. With the exception here and 
there, of a soldier's or a sailor's widow, hardly one of 
them seems to have perceived the existence of any distress 
in the world but their own ; none know what they are 
asking for, or imagine, unless as a remote contingency, the 
possibility of its having been promised at a prior date. 
The second most distinct impression on my mind L, that 
the portion of the British public which is in need ol 
presentations to Christ's Hospital, considers it a merit 
to have large families, with or without the means of 
supporting them ! 

Now it happened also (and remember, all this is 
strictly true, nor in the slightest particular represented 
otherwise than as it chanced ; though the said chance 
brought thus together exactly the evidence I wanted foi 



134 TIME AND TIDE. 

my letter to you) it happened, I say, that on this same 
morning of the 10th April, I became accidentally ac- 
quainted with a case of quite a different kind : that of a 
noble girl, who, engaged at sixteen, and having re- 
ceived several advantageous offers since, has remained 
for ten years faithful to her equally faithful lover ; while, 
their circumstances rendering it, as they rightly con- 
sidered, unjustifiable in them to think of marriage, each 
of them simply and happily, aided and cheered by the 
other's love, discharged the duties of their own separate 
positions in life. 

In the nature of things, instances of this kind of noble 
life remain more or less concealed (while imprudence and 
error proclaim themselves by misfortune), but they are as- 
suredly not unfrequent in our English homes. Let us 
next observe the political and national result of these 
arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled by 
" supply and demand," instead of wholesome law. And 
thus among your youths and maidens, the improvident, 
incontinent, selfish, and foolish ones marry whether you 
will or not ; and beget families of children, necessarily in- 
heritors in a great degree of these parental dispositions ; 
and for whom supposing they had the best dispositions in 
the world, you have thus provided, by way of educators, 
the foolishest fathers and mothers you could find (the onty 



LETTER XX. EC SE-GARDENS. 135 

rational sentence in their letters, usually, is the invari- 
able one, in which they declare themselves "incapable of 
providing for their children's education "). On the other 
hand, whosoever is wise, patient, unselfish, and pure, 
among yjur youth, you keep maid or bachelor ; wasting 
theii best days of natural life in painful sacrifice, forbid- 
ding them their best help and best reward, and carefully 
excluding their prudence and tenderness from any offices 
of parental duty. 

Is this not a beatific and beautifully sagacious sys- 
tem for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British 
Isles ? 

I will not here enter into any statement of the physical 
laws which it is the province of our physicians to explain ; 
and which are indeed at last so far beginning to be under- 
stood, that there is hope of the nation's giving some of the 
attention to the conditions affecting the race of man, which 
it has hitherto bestowed only on those which may better 
its races of cattle. 

It is enough, I think, to say here that the beginning of 
all sanitary and moral law is in the regulation of marriage^ 
and that, ugly and fatal as is every form and agency of 
license, no licentiousness is so mortal as licentiousness in 
marriage. 

Briefly, then, and in main points, subject in minor ones 



136 TIME AJSTD TIDE, 

to such modifications in detail as local circumstances and 
characters would render expedient, these following are 
laws such as a prudent nation would institute respecting 
its marriages. Permission to marry should be the reward 
held in sight of its youth during the entire latter part of 
the course of their education ; and it should be granted as 
the national attestation that the first portion of their lives 
had been rightfully fulfilled. It should not be attainable 
without earnest and consistent effort, though put within 
the reach of all who were willing to make such effort ; and 
the granting of it should be a public testimony to the fact, 
that the youth or maid to whom it was given had lived 
within their proper sphere, a modest and virtuous life, and 
had attained such skill in their proper handicraft, and in 
arts of household economy, as might give well-founded 
expectations of their being able honourably to maintain 
and teach their children. 

No girl should receive her permission to marry before 
her 17th birthday, nor any youth before his 21st ; and it 
should be a point of somewhat distinguished honour with 
both sexes to gain their permission of marriage in the 18th 
and 22d year; and a recognized disgrace not to have 
gained it at least before the close of their 21st and 24th. 
I do not mean that they should in any wise hasten actuaJ 
marriage ; but only that they should hold it a point of 



LETTER XX. ROSE-GARDENS. 13'< 

honour to have the right to ijiarry. In every year thera 
should be two festivals, one on the first of May, and one 
at the feast of harvest home in each district, at which fes- 
tivals their permissions to marry should be given publicly 
to the maidens and youths who had won them in that half 
year ; and they should be crowned, the maids by the old 
French title of Rosi&res, and the youths, perhaps by some 
name rightly derived from one supposed signification of 
the word "bachelor" "laurel fruit," and so led in joyful 
procession, with music and singing, through the city street 
or village lane, and the day ended with feasting of the 
poor : but not with feasting theirs, except quietly, at their 
homes. 

And every bachelor and rosiere should be entitled to 
claim, if they needed it, according to their position in life, 
a fixed income from the State, for seven years from the 
day of their marriage, for the setting up of their homes ; 
and however rich they might be by inheritance, their in- 
come should not be permitted to exceed a given sum, pro- 
portioned to their rank, for the seven years following that 
in which they had obtained their permission to marry, but 
should accumulate in the trust of the State, until that 
seventh year, in which they should be put (on certain 
conditions) finally in possession of their property ; and 
the men, thus necessarily not before their twenty-eighth, 



138 TIME AOT> TIDE. 

nor usually later than their thirty-first year, become eli- 
gible to offices of State. So that the rich and poor should 
not be sharply separated in the beginning of the war of 
-ife; but the one supported against the first stress of it 
long enough to enable them by proper forethought and 
economy to secure their footing ; and the other trained 
somewhat in the use of moderate means, before they were 
permitted to have the command of abundant ones. And 
of the sources from which these State incomes for the 
married poor should be supplied, or of the treatment of 
those of our youth whose conduct rendered it advisable to 
refuse them permission to marry, I defer what I have to 
say till we come to the general subjects of taxation and 
criminal discipline, leaving the proposals made in this 
letter to bear, for the present, whatever aspect of mere 
romance and unrealiable vision they probably may, and 
to most readers, such as they assuredly will. Nor shall I 
make the slightest effort to redeem them from these im- 
putations; for though there is nothing in all their pur- 
port which would not be approved, as in the deepest sense 
"practical" — by the " Spirit of Paradise" — 

Which gives to all the self- same bent, 
Whose lives are wise and innocent, 

— and though I know that national justice in conduct 



LETTEB XX. — ROSE-GAKDENS. 139 

and peace in heart, could by no other laws be so swiftly 
secured, I confess with much e&speace of heart, that both 
justice and happiness have at this day become, in Eng« 
jand, "roman'ic impossibilities." 



Ccttcr 21. 

Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts ; and of th* 
Proper System of Retail Trade. 

April 15, 1867. 

I return now to the part of the subject at which 
I was interrupted — the inquiry as to the proper means 
of finding persons willing to maintain themselves and 
others by degrading occupations. 

That, on the whole, simply manual occupations are 
degrading, I suppose I may assume you to admit; at 
all events, the fact is so, and I suppose few general 
readers will have any doubt of it.* 

* Many of my working readers have disputed this statement eager- 
ly, feeling the good effect of work in themselves ; but observe, I only 
say, simply or totally manual work; and that, alone, is degrading, 
though often in measure refreshing, wholesome, and necessary. 
So it is highly necessary and wholesome to eat sometimes ; but de- 
grading to eat all day, as to labour with the hands all day. But it 
13 not degrading to think all day — if you can. A highly bred court 
lady, rightly interested in politics and literature, is a much finer type 
of the human creature than a servant of all work, however clevei 
and honest. 



LETTER XXI. GEISTTILLESSE. 141 

Granting this, it follows as a direct consequence 
that it is the duty of all persons in highei stations of 
life, by every means in their power, to diminish their 
demand for work of such kind, and to live with as 
little aid from the lower trades as they can possibly 
contrive. 

I suppose you see that this conclusion is not a little 
at variance with received notions on political economy ? 
It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nation to 
invent a want. But the fact is, that the true benefit 
is in extinguishing a want — in living with as few 
wants as possible. 

I cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common 
writers on political economy, in their stupefied missing 
of this first principle of all human economy — individual 
or political — to live, namely, with as few wants as possi- 
ble, and to waste nothing of what is given you to sup- 
ply them. 

This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's 
political code. "Sir," his tutor should early say to 
him, "you are so placed in society — it may be for your 
misfortune, it must be for your trial — that you are 
likely to be maintained all your life by the labour of 
other men. Tou will have to make shoes for nobody 
but some one will have to make a great many for you. 



142 TIME AND TIDE. 

You will have to dig ground for nobody, but some 
one will have to dig through every summer's hot day 
for you. You will build houses and make clothes for 
no cne, but many a rough hand must knead clay, and 
many an elbow be crooked to the stitch, to keep that 
body of yours warm and fine. Now remember, what- 
ever you and your work may be worth, the less your 
keep costs, the better. It does not cost money only. 
It costs degradation. You do not merely employ these 
people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be 
helped ; — you have your place, and they have theirs ; 
but see that you tread as lightly as possible, and on as 
few as possible. What food, and clothes, and lodging, 
you honestly need, for your health and peace, you 
may righteously take. See that you take the plainest 
you can serve yourself with — that you waste or wear 
nothing vainly;— and that you employ no man in fur- 
nishing you with any useless luxury." That is the first 
lesson of Christian — or human — economy; and depend 
upon it, my friend, it is a sound one, and has every 
voice and vote of the spirits of Heaven and earth to 
back it, whatever views the Manchester men, or any 
other manner of men, may take respecting " demand 
and supply." Demand what you deserve, and yon 
shall be supplied with it, for your good. Demand what 



LETTER XXI. GENTILLESSE. 143 

you do not deserve, and you shall be supplied with 
something which you have not demanded, and which 
Nature perceives that you deserve, quite to the contrary 
of your good. That is the law of your existence, and 
if you do not make it the law of your resolved acts— - 
60 much, precisely, the worse for you and all connected 
with you. 

Yet observe, though it is out of its proper place 
said here, this law forbids no luxury which men are 
not degraded in providing. You may have Paul Ver- 
onese to paint your ceiling, if you like, or Benvenuto 
Cellini to make cups for you. But you must not 
employ a hundred divers to find beads to stitch over 
your sleeve. (Did you see the account of the sales 
of the Esterhazy jewels the other day ?) 

And the degree in which you recognize the diiference 
between these two kinds of services, is precisely what 
makes the difference between your being a civilized per- 
son or a barbarian. If you keep slaves to furnish forth 
your dress — to glut your stomach — sustain your indolence 
— or deck your pride, you are a barbarian. If you keep 
servants, properly cared for, to furnish you with what you 
verily want, and no more than that — you are a " civil n 
person — a person capable of the qualities of citizenship. 
.'Just look to the note on Liebig s idea that civilization 



144 TIME AND TIDE. 

means the consumption of coal, page 200 to 201 of the 
Crown of Wild Olive,* and please observe tl e sentence 
at the end of it, which signifies a good deal of what 1 
have to expand here, — " Civilization is the making of 
civil persons.") 

Now, farther, observe that in a truly civilized and dis- 
ciplined state, no man would be allowed to meddle with 
any material who did not know how to make the best of 
it. In other words, the arts of working in wood, clay, 
stone, and metal, would all be fine arts (working in iron 
for machinery becoming an entirely distinct business). 
There would be no joiner's work, no smith's, no pottery 
nor stone-cutting, so debased in character as to be entirely 
unconnected with the finer branches of the same art; 
and to at least one of these finer branches (generally in 
metal work) every painter and sculptor would be neces- 
sarily apprenticed during some years of his education. 
There would be room, in these four trades abne, for 
nearly every grade of practical intelligence and produc- 
tive imagination. 

But it should not be artists alone who are exercised 
early in these crafts. It would be part of my scheme oi 
physical education that every youth in the State — from 
the King's son downwards — should learn to do some 

° Appendix 9 



LETTER XXI. GENTILLESSE. 145 

thing finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let 
him know what touch meant; and what stout craftman- 
ship meant ; and to inform him of many things besides, 
which nc man can learn but by some severely accurate 
discipline in doing. Let him once learn to take a straight 
shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve without falter- 
ing, or lay a brick level in its mortar ; and he has learned 
a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could 
ever teach him. He might choose his craft, but whatever 
it was, he should learn it to some sufficient degree of true 
dexterity : and the result would be, in after life, that 
among the middle classes a good deal of their house 
furniture would be made, and a good deal of rough work, 
more or less clumsily, but not ineffectively, got through, 
by the master himself and his sons, with much further- 
ance of their general health and peace of mind, and 
increase of innocent domestic pride and pleasure, and to 
the extinction of a greal deal of vulgar upholstery and 
other mean handicraft. 

Farther. A great deal of the vulgarity, and nearly all 
the vice, of retail commerce, involving the degradation of 
persons occupied in it, depends simply on the fact that 
their minds are always occupied by the vital (or rather 
mortal) question of profits. I should at once put an end 
to this source of basene&s by making all retail dealers 



146 TIME AOT) TIDE. 

merely salaried officers in the employ of the trade guilds; 
the stewards, that is to say, of the saleable properties oi 
those guilds, and purveyors of such and such articles to a 
given number of families. A perfectly well-educated per- 
son might without the least degradation hold such an 
office as this, however poorly paid ; and it would be pre- 
cisely the fact of his being well educated which would 
enable him to fulfil his duties to the public without the 
stimulus of direct profit. Of course the current objection 
to such a system would be that no man, for a regularly 
paid salary, would take pains to please his customers; 
and the answer to that objection is, that if you can train 
a man to so much unselfishness as to offer himself fear- 
lessly to the chance of being shot, in the course of 
his daily duty, you can most assuredly, if you make it 
also a point of honour with him, train him to the 
amount of self-denial involved in looking you out with 
care such a piece of cheese or bacon as you have asked 
for. 

You see that I have already much diminished the 
number of employments involving degradation ; and 
raised the character of many of those that are left. 
There remain to be considered the necessarily pairful or 
mechanical works of mining, forging, and the like: the 
unclean, noisome, or paltry manufactures-— the various 



LETTER XXI. GENTILLESSE. 147 

kinds of transport — (by merchant shipping, etc.) — and 
the conditions of menial service. 

It will facilitate the examination of these if we put 
them for the moment aside, and pass to the other division 
of our dilemma, the question, namely, what kind of lives 
our gentlemen and ladies are to live, for whom all this 
hard work is to be done. 



Cetter 22. 

Of the normal Position and Duties of the Upper Classes* 
— General Statement of the Land Question, 

April 17. 1 S67. 

In passing now to the statement of conditions affecting 
the interests of the upper classes, I would rather have 
addressed these closing letters to one of themselves than 
to you, for it is with their own faults and needs that each 
class is primarily concerned. As however, unless I kept 
the letters private, this change of their address would be 
but a matter of courtesy and form, not of any true pru- 
dential use ; and as besides I am now no more inclined to 
reticence — prudent or otherwise ; but desire only to state 
the facts of our national economy as clearly and com- 
pletely as may be, I pursue the subject without respect 
of persons. 

Before examining what the occupation and estate of 
the upper classes ought, as far as may reasonably be con 
jectured, finally to become, it will be well to set down in 
brief terms what they actually have been in past ages: 



LETTER XXTT. — THE MASTER. 149 

for this, in many respects, they must also always be. 
The upper classes, broadly speaking, are always origi- 
nally composed of the best-bred (in the merely animal 
bense of the term), the most energetic, and most thought- 
ful, of the population, who either by strength of arm 
seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of them, or 
bring desert land into cultivation, over which they have 
therefore, within certain limits, true personal right ; or 
by industry, accumulate other property, or by choice 
devote themselves to intellectual pursuits, and, though 
poor, obtain an acknowledged superiority of position, 
shown by benefits conferred in discovery, or in teaching, 
or in gifts of art. This is all in the simple course of the 
law of nature; and the proper offices of the upper 
classes, thus distinguished from the rest, become, there- 
fore, in the main threefold : — 

(A) Those who are strongest of arm have for their 
proper function the restraint and punishment of vice, and 
the general maintenance of law and order ; releasing only 
from its original subjection to their power that which 
truly deserves to be emancipated. 

(B) Those who are superior by forethought and indus- 
try, have for their function to be the providences of the 
foolish, the weak, and the idle ; and to establish such sys- 
tems of trade and distribution of goods as shall preserve 



150 TIME AND TIDE. 

the lower orders from perishing by famine, or any other 
consequence of their carelessness or folly, and to bring 
them all, according to each man's capacity, at last into 
some harmonious industry. 

(C) The third class, of scholars and artists, of course 
have for function the teaching and delighting of the infe- 
rior multitude. 

The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is to 
keep order among their inferiors, and raise them always 
to the nearest level with themselves of which those infe- 
riors are capable. So far as they are thus occupied, they 
are invariably loved and reverenced intensely by all be- 
neath them, and reach, themselves, the highest types of 
human power and beauty. 

This, then, being the natural ordinance and function 
of aristocracy, its corruption, like that of all other beau- 
tiful things under the Devil's touch, is a very fearful one. 
Its corruption is, that those who ought to be the rulers 
and gmdes of the people, forsake their task of painful 
honourableness ; seek their own pleasure and pre-emi- 
nence only; and use their power, subtlety, conceded 
influence, prestige of ancestry, and mechanical instru- 
mentality of martial power, to make the lower orders toil 
for them, and feed and clothe them for nothing, and be- 
come' in various ways theii living property, goods, and 



LETTER XXII. THE MASTER. 151 

chattels, even to the point of utter regardlessness of 
whatever misery these serfs may suffer through such 
insolent domination, or they themselves, their masters, 
commit of crime to enforce it. 

And this is especially likely to be the case when means 
of various and tempting pleasure are put within the 
reach of the upper classes by advanced conditions of 
national commerce and knowledge : and it is certain to 
be the case as soon as position among those upper classes 
becomes any way purchaseable with money, instead of 
being the assured measure of some kind of worth (either 
strength of hand, or true wisdom of conduct, or imagina- 
tive gift). It has been becoming more and more the 
condition of the aristocracy of Europe, ever since the 
fifteenth century; and is gradually bringing about its 
ruin, and in that ruin, checked only by the power which 
here and there a good soldier or true statesman achieves 
over the putrid chaos of its vain policy, the ruin of all 
beneath it; which can be arrested only, either by the 
repentance of that old aristocracy (hardly to be hoped), 
or by the stern substitution of other aristocracy worthier 
than it. Corrupt as it may be, it and its laws together, I 
would at this moment, if I could, fasten every one of its 
institutions down with bands of iron and trust for all 
progress and help against its tyranny simply to the 



152 TIME AJSTD TIDE. 

patience and strength of private conduct. And if I had 
to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old 
Austria triumphant in the old and new worlds, and truet 
to the chance (or rather the distant certainty) of some 
day seeing a true Emperor born to its throne, than, with 
every privilege of thought and act, run the most distant 
risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of Germany 
and England become like the thoughts of the people of 
America.* 

* My American friends, of whom one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Cam- 
bridge, is the best I have in the world, teU me I know nothing about 
America. It may be so, and they must do me the justice to observe 
that I, therefore, usually say nothing about America. But this I say, 
because the Americans as a nation set their trust in liberty and in 
equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the possibility of the 
other ; and because, also, as a nation, they are wholly undesirous of 
Best, and incapable of it ; irreverent of themselves, both in the pres- 
ent and in the future ; discontented with what they are, yet having no 
ideal of anything which they desire to become, as the tide of the 
troubled sea, when it cannot rest. 

Some following passages in this letter, containing personal ref erencei 
which might, in permanence, have given pain or offence, are no^ 
omitted — the substance of them being also irrelevant to my main pur- 
pose. These few words about the American war, with which they con- 
cluded, are, I think, worth retaining: — " All methods of right Govern- 
ment are to be communicated to foreign nations by perfectness of 
example and gentleness of patiently expanded power, not suddenly, noi 



LETTER XXII. THE MASTER. 153 

But, however corrupted, the aristocracy of any nation 
may thus be always divided into three great classes. First, 
the landed proprietors and soldiers, essentially one politi- 
cal body (for the possession of land can only be maintained 
by military power) ; secondly, the monied men and leaders 
of commerce ; thirdly, the professional men and masters in 
science, art, and literature. 

And we were to consider the proper duties of all these, 
and the laws probably expedient respecting them. Where- 
upon, in the outset we are at once brought face to face 
with the great land question. 

Great as it may be, it is wholly subordinate to those we 
have hitherto been considering. The laws you make 
regarding methods of labour, or to secure the genuineness 
of the things produced by it, affect the entire moral state 
of the nation, and all possibility of human happiness for 
them. The mode of distribution of the land only affects 
their numbers. By this or that law respecting land, you 

at the bayonet's point. And though it is the duty of every nation to 
interfere, at bayonet point, if they have the strength to do so, to save 
any oppressed multitude, or even individual, from manifest violence, it 
it is wholly unlawful to interfere in such matter, except with sacredly 
pledged limitation of the objects to be accomplished in the oppressed 
person's favour, and with absolute refusal of all selfish advantage and 
increase of territory or of political power which might otherwise accrue 

from the victory." 

7* 



154 TEVTE AXD TIDE. 

decide whether the nation shall consist of fifty or of a hun 
dred millions. But by this or that law respecting work, 
you decide whether the given number of millions shall be 
rogues, or honest men ; — shall be wretches, or happy men. 
And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial, com- 
pared with that of character ; or rather, its own material- 
nese depends on the prior determination of character. 
Make your nation consist of knaves, and. as Emerson said 
long ago, it is but the case of any other vermin — " the 
raore, the worse." Or, to put the matter in narrower 
1 mits, it is a matter of no final .concern to any parent 
whether he shall have two children, or four; but matter 
ot quite final concern whether those he has, shsj, 
or ^hall not, deserve to be hanged. The great difficulty in 
dea'lng with the land question at all arises from the false, 
thorgh very natural, notion on the part of many reformers, 
and of large bodies of the poor, that the division of the 
land among the said poor would be an immediate and 
everlasting relief to them. An immediate relief it would 
be to the extent of a small annual sum (you may easily 
calculate how little, if you choose) to each of them ; on the 
strength of which accession to their finances, they would 
multiply into as much extra personality as the extra pence 
would sustain, and at that point be checked by starvation, 
exactly as they are now. 



LETTER XXII. THE MASTER. 155 

Any other form of pillage would benefit them only 
in like manner ; and in reality the difficult part of the 
question respecting numbers is, not where they shall be 
arrested, but what shall be the method of their airest. 

An island of a certain size has standing room only for 
so many people ; feeding ground for a great many fewer 
than could stand on it. Reach the limits of your feeding 
ground, and you must cease to multiply, must emigrate, 
or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually 
brought to bear on the population depend on the justice 
of your laws ; but the pressure itself must come at last, 
whatever the distribution of the land. And arithme- 
ticians seem to me a little slow to remark the importance 
of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the horseshoe 
—when it is populations that are doubling themselves, 
instead of farthings. 

The essential land question then is to be treated quite 
separately from that of the methods of restriction of 
population. The land question is — At what point will 
you resolve to stop ? It is separate matter of discussion 
how you are to stop at it. 

And this essential land question — " At what point will 
y>u stop?" — is itself twofold. You have to consider 
first, by what methods of land distribution you can 
maintain the greatest number of healthy persons ; a id 



156 TIME AND TIDE. 

secondly, whether, if by any other mode of distribution 
and relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, 
while you diminish their numbers, such sacrifice should 
be made, and to what extent ? I think it will be better, 
for clearness sake, to end this letter with the putting of 
these two queries in their decisive form, and to reserve 
suggestions of answer for my next. 



fetter 23. 

Of the Just Tenure of Lands: a?id the proper 

Functions of high Public Officers. 

20lh April, 1867. 

I must repeat to you, once more, before I proceed, 
that I only enter on this part of our inquiry to com- 
plete the sequence of its system and explain fully the 
bearing of former conclusions, and not for any imme- 
diately practicable good to be got out of the investiga- 
tion. Whatever I have hitherto urged upon you, it 
is in the power of all men quietly to promote, and 
finally to secure, by the patient resolution of personal 
conduct; but no action could be taken in redistribu- 
tion of land, or in limitation of the incomes of the 
upper classes, without grave and prolonged civil dis- 
turbance. 

Such disturbance, however, is only too likely to take 
place, if the existing theories of political economy are 
allowed credence much longer. In the writings of 
the vulgar economists, nothing more excites my indig- 



158 TIME AKD TIDE. * 

nation than the subterfuges by which they endeavour tc 
accommodate their pseudo-science to the existing abuses 
of wealth by disguising the true nature of rent. 1 
will not waste time in exposing their fallacies, but 
will put the truth for you into as clear a shape as 
1 can. 

Rent, of whatever kind, is, briefly, the price continu- 
ously paid for the loan of the property of another person< 
It may be too little, or it may be just, or exorbitant, 
or altogether unjustifiable, according to circumstances. 
Exorbitant rents can only be exacted from ignorant 
or necessitous rent payers ; and it is one of the most 
necessary conditions of state economy that there should 
be clear laws to prevent such exaction. 

I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you 
an instance of what I mean. The most wretched 
houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen 
per cent, to the landlord ; and I have known an instance 
of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many 
hundreds of lives, in order that the rents of a noble- 
man, derived from the necessities of the poor, might 
tot be diminished. And it is a curious thing to me to 
see Mr. J. S. Mill foaming at the mouth, and really 
afflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man 
to have been unjustly hanged, while by his own failure 



LETTER XXITI. LANDMARKS. 159 

(I believe, wilful failure) in stating clearly to the 
public one of the first elementary truths of the science 
he professes, he is aiding and abetting the commission 
of the cruellest possible form of murder on many thou- 
sands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting 
money into the pockets of the landlords. 1 felt this 
evil so strongly that I bought, in the worst part of 
London, one freehold and one leasehold property, con- 
sisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor ; in order 
to try what change in their comfort and habits I could 
effect by taking only a just rent, but that firmly. The 
houses of the leasehold pay me five per cent. ; the 
families that used to have one room in them have now 
two ; and are more orderly and hopeful besides ; and 
there is a surplus still on the rents they pay, after I 
have taken my five per cent., with which, if all goes 
well, they will eventually be able to buy twelve years 
of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per cent., 
with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This 
is merely an example of what might be done by firm 
State action in such matters. 

Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for 
things which are not, and which it is criminal to considei 
as, personal or exchangeable property Bodies of men, 
land, water, and air, are the principal of these things, 



160 TIME AXT> TIDE. 

Parenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though 
a fearless defender of some forms of slavery, I am no 
defender of the slave trade. It is by a blundering eon- 
fusion of ideas between governing men, and trading in 
men, and by consequent interference with the restraint, 
instead of only with the sale, that most of the great 
errors in action have been caused among the emancipa- 
tion men. I am prepared, if the need be clear to my 
own mind, and if the power is in my hands, to throw 
men into prison, or any other captivity — to bind them 
or to beat them — and force them for such periods, as 
I may judge necessary, to any kind of irksome labour ; 
and on occasion of desperate resistance, to hang or shoot 
them. But I will not sell them. 

Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I 
said before, their souls), must not be bought or sold. 
Neither must land, nor water, nor air. 

Yet all these may on certain terms be bound, or secured 
in possession, to particular persons under certain condi- 
tions. For instance, it may be proper at a certain time, 
to give a man permission to possess land, as you give 
him permission to marry ; and farther, if he wishes it 
and works for it, to secure to him the land needful for 
his life, as you secure his wife to him ; and make both 
utterly his own, without in the least admitting his 



LETTER XXIII. — LANDMARKS. 161 

right to buy other people's wives, or fields, or to sell hia 
own. 

And the right action of a State respecting its land is, 
indeed, to secure it in various portions to those of its 
citizens who deserve to be trusted with it, according to 
their respective desires, and proved capacities ; and aftei 
having so secured it to each, to exercise only such vig- 
ilance over his treatment of it as the State must give 
also to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the 
most part leaving him free, but interfering in cases of 
gross mismanagement or abuse of power. And in the 
case of great old families, which always ought to be, and 
in some measure, however decadent, still truly are, the 
noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living 
temples of sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much 
land ought to be granted to them in perpetuity as 
may enable them to live thereon with all circumstances of 
state and outward nobleness ; hut their income must in 
no wise he derived from the rents of it, nor must they 
be occupied (even in the most distant or subordinately 
administered methods), in the exaction of rents. That 
is not noblemen's work. Their income must be fixed, 
and paid them by the State, as the King's is. 

So far from their land being to them a source of in- 
come, it should be on the whole costly to them, being 



162 TIME AND TIDE. 

kept over great part of it in conditions of natural grace, 
which return no rent but their loveliness; and the rest 
made, at whatever cost, exemplary in perfection of such 
agriculture as developes the happiest peasant life; agri- 
culture which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject 
the aid of all mechanism except that of instruments 
guided solely by the human hand, or by animal, or di- 
rectly natural forces ; and which, therefore, cannot com- 
pete for profitableness with agriculture carried on by aid 
of machinery. 

And now for the occupation of this body of men, 
maintained at fixed perennial cost of the State. 

You know I said I should want no soldiers of special 
skill or pugnacity, for all my boys would be soldiers. 
But I assuredly want captains of soldiers, of special skill 
and pugnacity. And also, I said I should strongly object 
to the appearance of any lawyers in my territory. Mean- 
ing, however, by lawyers, people who live by arguing about 
law — not people appointed to administer law ; and people 
who live by eloquently misrepresenting facts— not people 
appointed to discover and plainly represent them. 

Therefore, the youth of this landed aristocracy are to 
be trained in my schools to these two great callings, not 
by which, but in which, they are to live. 

They are to be trained, all of them, in peifect science 



LETTER XXm. LANDMARKS. 163 

of war, and in perfect science of essential law. And 
from their body are to be chosen the captains and the 
judges of England, its advocates, and generally its State 
officers, all such functions being held for fixed pay (as 
already our officers of the Church and army are paid), 
and no function connected with the administration of law 
ever paid by casual fee. And the head of such family 
should, in his own right, having passed due (and high) 
examination in the science of law, and not otherwise, be 
a judge, law -ward or Lord, having jurisdiction both in 
civil and criminal cases, such as our present judges have, 
after such case shall have been fully represented before, 
and received verdict from, a jury, composed exclusively 
of the middle or lower orders, and in which no member 
of the aristocracy should sit. But from the decision of 
these juries, or from the Lord's sentence, there should be 
a final appeal to a tribunal, the highest in the land, held 
solely in the King's name, and over which, in the capital, 
the King himself should preside, and therein give judg- 
ment on a fixed number of days in each year ; and in 
other places and at other times, Judges appointed by elec- 
tion (under certain conditions) out of any order of men 
in the State (the election being national, not provincial), 
and all causes brought before these judges should be 
decided, without appeal, by their own authority ; not by 



164 TIME AOTD TIDE. 

juries. This, then, recasting it for you into brief "view, 
would be the entire scheme of State authorities : — 

1. The King : exercising, as part both of his preroga- 
tive and his duty, the office of a supreme judge at stated 
times in the central court of appeal of his kingdom. 

2. Supreme judges appointed by national election ; 
exercising sole authority in courts of final appeal. 

3. Ordinary judges, holding the office hereditarily 
under conditions; and with power to add to their num- 
ber (and liable to have it increased if necessary by the 
King's appointment): the office of such judges being 
to administer the national law^s under the decision of 
juries. 

4. State officers charged with the direction of public 
agency in matters of public utility. 

5. Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and aid, 
to family by family, and person by person, 

6. The officers of war, of various ranks. 

7. The officers of public instruction, of various ranks. 
I have sketched out this scheme for you somewhat 

prematurely, for I would rather have conducted you to 
it step by step, and as I brought forward the reasons for 
the several parts of it ; but it is on other grounds de- 
sirable that you should have it to refer to, as I go on. 
Without depending anywise upon nomenclature, yet 



LETTER XXTTT. LANDMARKS. 165 

holding it important as a sign and record of the mean- 
ings of things, I may tell you further that I should call 
the elected supreme Judges, " Princes ; " the hereditary 
Judges, " Lords;" and the officers of public guidance, 
" Dukes ; " and that the social rank of these persons 
would be very closely correspondent to that implied by 
such titles under our present constitution ; only much 
more real and useful. And in conclusion of this letter, 
I will but add, that if you, or other readers, think it idle 
of me to write or dream of such things ; as if any of 
them were in our power, or within possibility of any 
near realisation, and above all, vain to write of them to 
a workman at Sunderland : you are to remember what I 
told you at the beginning, that I go on with this part of 
my subject in some fulfilment of my long-conceived plan, 
too large to receive at present any deliberate execution 
from my failing strength (being the body of the work 
to which u Munera Pulveris " was intended merely for 
an introduction) ; and that I address it to you be- 
cause I know that the working men of England must 
for some time be the only body to which we can look 
for resistance to the deadly influence of monied power. 
I intend, however, to write to you at this moment 
one more letter, partly explanatory of minor details 
necessarily omitted in this, and chiefly of the proper 



166 TIME AKD TIDE. 

office of the soldier ; and then I must delay the com- 
pletion of even this poor task until after the days have 
turned, for I have quite other work. to do in the bright- 
ness of the full-opened spring. 

P.S. — As I have used somewhat strong language, botli 
here and elsewhere, of the equivocations of the econo- 
mists on the subject of rent, I had better refer you to 
one characteristic example. You will find in paragraph 
5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's "Princi 
pies," that the right to tenure of land is based, by his 
admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver. 

Without pausing to dwell on the objection that land 
cannot be improved beyond a certain point, and that, 
at the reaching of that point, farther claim to tenure 
would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle, — take even this 
admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that 
"in no sound theory of private property was it ever 
contemplated that the proprietor of land should be 
merely a sinecurist quartered on it." Now, had that 
conclusion been farther followed, it would have com- 
pelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which 
normally maintained any person in idleness; which is 
indeed the whole truth of the matter. But Mr. Mill 
instantly retreats from this perilous admission ; and 
after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate 



LETTER XXIII, LANDMARKS. 167 

for its part) of the limits of power in management oi 
the land itself (which apply just as strictly to the peasant 
proprietor as to the cottier's landlord), he begs the whole 
question at issue in one brief sentence, slipped cunningly 
into the middle of a long one which appears to be tell- 
ing all the other way, and in which the fatal assertion 
(of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been 
already proved, — thus I italicise the unproved assertion 
in which the venom of the entire falsehood is con- 
centrated. 

" Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, 
though only one among millions, the law permits to 
hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not en- 
titled to think that all this is given to him to use and 
abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but 
himself. The rents or profits which he can obtain from 
it are his, and his only ; but with regard to the land, 
in everything which he abstains from doing, he is morally 
bound, and should, whenever the case admits, be legally 
compelled, to make his interest and pleasure consistent 
with the public good." 

I say, this sentence in italics is slipped cunningly 
into the long sentence, as if it were of no great conse- 
quence ; and above 1 have expressed my belief that Mr. 
Mill's equivocations on this subject are wilful. It is 



168 TIME AND TIDE. 

a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of 
charity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute 
dulness and bluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or 
his follower, Mr. Fawcett. Mr. Mill is capable of im- 
mense involuntary error; but his involuntary errors 
are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the 
many sides of a tiring : not to obscure sight of the side 
he does see. Thus, his "Essay on Liberty" only takes 
cognisance of facts that make for liberty, and of none 
that make for restraint. But in its statement of all 
that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen that 
I have myself quoted it before now as the best authority 
on that side. And if arguing in favour of Rent, abso- 
lutely, and with clear explanation of what it was, he 
had then defended it with all his might, I should have 
attributed to him only the honest shortsightedness of 
partisanship ; but when I find his defining sentences 
full of subtle entanglement and reserve — and that re- 
serve held throughout his treatment of this particular 
subject — I cannot, whether I utter the suspicion or not, 
keep the sense of wilfulness in the misrepresentation 
from remaining in my mind. And if there be indeed 
ground for this blame, and Mr. Mill, for fear of fostering 
political agitation,* has disguised what he knows to be 
♦With at last the natural consequences of cowardice, — nitroglyo 



LETTER XXTfl. LAJSTDMAKKS. 169 

facts about rent, I would ask him as one of the leading 
members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater 
crime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of 
one man, known to be an agitator, in the immediate 
outbreak of such agitation, or by equivocation in a 
scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of thou- 
sands of men in slow misery, for fear of an agitation 
which has not begun ; and if begun, would be carried 
on by debate, not by the sword ? 

erine and fireballs ! Let the upper classes speak the truth about 
themselves boldly, and they will know how to defend themselves 
fearlessly. It is equivocation in principle, and dereliction from duty, 
which melt at last into tears in a mob's presence. — (Dec. 16th, 1867.) 

8 



Cctter m. 

The Office of the Soldier. 

jtprU 22, 1867. 
I must once more deprecate your probable supposition 
that I bring forward this ideal plan of State government, 
either with any idea of its appearing, to our present pub- 
lic mind, practicable even at a remote period, or with any 
positive and obstinate adherence to the particular form 
suggested. There are no wiser words among the many 
wise ones of the most rational and keen-sighted of old 
English men of the world, than these : — 

" For forms of government let fools contest ; 
That which is best administered is best." 

For, indeed, no form of government is of any use among 
bad men ; and any form will work in the hands of the 
good; but the essence of all government among good 
men is this, that it is mainly occupied in the production 
and recognition of human worth, and in the detection 
and extinction of human un worthiness ; and every Gov- 
ernment which produces and recognizes worth, will also 
inevitably use the worth it has found to govern with ; 



LETTER XXXV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 173 

and therefore fall into some approximation to such a 
system as I have described. And, as I told you, I do 
not contend for names, nor particular powers — though I 
state those which seem to me most advisable ; on the 
contrary, I know that the precise extent of authorities 
must be different in every nation at different times, and 
unght to be so, according to their circumstances and 
character ; and all that I assert with confidence is the 
necessity, within afterwards definable limits, of some 
such authorities as these ; that is to say, 

I. An observant one : — by w T hich all men shall be 
.ooked after and taken note of. 

II. A helpful one, from which those who need help 
may get it. 

III. A prudential one, which shall not let people dig 
in wrong places for coal, nor make railroads w^here they 
are not wanted ;* and which shall also, with true provi- 
dence, insist on their digging in right places for coal, in 
a safe manner, and making railroads where they are 
wanted. 

TV. A mcvrtial one, which will punish knaves, and 
make idte persons work. 

V. An instructive one, which shall tell everybody 
what it is their duty to know, and be ready pleasantly 
to answer questions if anybody asks them. 



172 TIME AND TIDE. 

VI. A deliberate and decisive one, which shall judge 
by law, and amend or make law ; 

VII. An exemplary one, which shall show what is 
loveliest in the art of life. 

Ton may divide or name those several offices as you 
will, or they may be divided in practice as expediency 
may recommend ; the plan I have stated merely puts 
them all into the simplest forms and relations. 

You see I have just defined the martial power as that 
" which punishes knaves and makes idle persons work." 
For that is indeed the ultimate and perennial soldiership ; 
that is the essential warrior's office to the end of time. 
"There is no discharge in that war." To the compel- 
ling of sloth, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand 
will have to address itself as long as this wretched little 
dusty and volcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. 
The soldier's office at present is indeed supposed to be 
the defence of his country against other countries ; but 
that is an office which — Utopian as you may think the 
saying — will soon now be extinct. I say so fearlessly, 
though I say it with wide war threatened, at this moment, 
in the East and West. For observe what the standing 
of nations on their defence really means. It means that, 
but for such armed attitude, each of them would go and 
rob the other; that is to say, that the majority of active 



LETTEK XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. HI'S 

persons in every nation are at present — thieves. I am 
very sorry that this should still be so ; but it will not be 
so long. National exhibitions, indeed, will not bring 
peace; but national education will, and that is soon 
coming. I can judge of this by my own mind, for I am 
myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this 
world, and am as eagerly-minded to go and steal some 
things the French have got, as any housebreaker could 
be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I could by mili- 
tary incursion carry off Paul Veronese's "Marriage in 
Cana," and the " Venus Victrix " and the " Hours of St. 
Louis," it would give me the profoundest satisfaction to 
accomplish the foray successfully ; nevertheless, being a 
comparatively educated person, I should most assuredly 
not give myself that satisfaction, though there were not 
an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. 
I have not the least mind to rob anybody, however much 
I may covet what they have got ; and I know that the 
French and British public may and will, with many other 
publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also ; and 
to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness 
do not depend on properties and territories, nor on ma- 
chinery for their defence ; but on their getting such ter- 
ritory as they have, well filled with none but respectable 
persons, "Which is a way of infinitely enlarging one's 



174 TIME AND TIDE. 

territory, feasible to every potentate ; and dependent no 
wise on getting Trent turned, or Rhine-edge reached. 

Not but that, in the present state of things, it may 
often be soldiers' duty to seize territory, and told it 
strongly ; but only from banditti, or savage and idle per- 
sons. 

Thus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been 
irresistibly occupied long ago. Instead of quarrelling 
with Austria about Venice, the Italians ought to have 
made a truce with her for ten years, on condition only 
of her destroying no monuments, and not taxing Italians 
more than Germans ; and then thrown the whole force 
of their army on Calabria, shot down every bandit in it 
in a week, and forced the peasantry of it into honest 
work on every hill side, with stout and immediate help 
from the soldiers in embanking streams, building walls, 
and the like; and Italian finance would have been a 
much pleasanter matter for the King to take account 
of by this time ; and a fleet might have been floating 
under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile 
sail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and use- 
less remnant of one, about to be put up to auction. 

And similarly, we ought to have occupied Greece in- 
stantly, when they asked us, whether Russia liked it or 
not ; given them an English king, made good roads foi 



LETTEK XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 175 

them, and stout laws; and kept them, and their hills and 
seas, with righteous shepherding of Arcadian fields, and 
righteous ruling of Salaminian wave, until they could 
have given themselves a Greek king of men again ; and 
obeyed him, like men. 

April 24. 

It is strange that just before I finish work for this 
time, there comes the first real and notable sign of the 
victory of the principles I have been fighting for, these 
seven years. It is only a newspaper paragraph, but it 
means much. Look at the second column of the 11th 
page of yesterday's Pall Mall Gazette. The paper has 
taken a wonderful fit of misprinting lately (unless my 
friend John Simon has been knighted on his way to 
Weimar, which would be much too right and good a 
thing to be a likely one) ; but its straws of talk mark 
which way the wind blows perhaps more early than those 
of any other journal — and look at the question it puts 
in that page, " Whether political economy be the sordid 
and materialistic science some account it, or almost the 
noblest on which thought can be employed ? " Might 
not you as well have determined that question a little 
while ago, friend Public? and known what political 
economy was, before you talked so much about it? 



176 TIME AND TIDE. 

But, hark, again — " Ostentation, parental pride, and a 
host of moral" (immoral?) "qualities must be recog- 
nized as among the springs of industry ; political econ- 
omy should not ignore these, but, to discuss them, it 
?nust abandon its pretensions to the precision of a pure 
science" 

Well done the Pall Mall! Had it written "Pru- 
dence and parental affection," instead of " Ostentation 
and parental pride," " must be recognized among the 
springs of industry," it would have been still better ; and 
it would then have achieved the expression of a part of 
the truth, which I put into clear terms in the first sen- 
tence of "Unto this Last," in the year 1862 — which it 
has thus taken five years to get half way into the pub- 
lic's head. 

" Among the delusions which at different periods have 
possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of 
the human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the 
least creditable — is the modern soi-disant science of po- 
litical economy, based on the idea that an advantageous 
code of social action may be determined, irrespectively 
of the influence of social affection." 

Look also at the definition of skill, p. 87. 

" Under the term ' skill ' I mean to include the 
united force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AOT) HONEYCOMB. 177 

operation on manual labour, and under the term i pas- 
sion' to include the entire range of the moral feel 



mgs. 



?5 



I say half way into the public's head, because you see, 
a few lines further on, the Pall Mall hopes for a pause 
"half way between the rigidity of Ricardo and the senti- 
mentality of Ruskin." 

With one hand on their pocket, and the other on their 
heart ! Be it so for the present ; we shall see how long 
this statuesque attitude can be maintained ; meantime, it 
chances strangely — as several other things have chanced 
while I was writing these notes to you — that they should 
have put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on 
the meaning of the Homeric and Platonic sirens, at the 
very moment when I was doubting whether I would or 
would not tell you the significance of the last song of 
Ariel in the Tempest. 

I had half determined not, but now I shall. And 
this was what brought me to think of it — 

Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. H. C. Sorby, to 
see some of the results of an inquiry he has been follow- 
ing all last year, into the nature of the colouring matter 
of leaves and flowers. 

You most probably have heard (at all events, may 

vrith little trouble hear) of the marvellous power which 

8* 



178 TIME A^D TIDE. 

chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries re 
specting the laws of light. 

My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and 
the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hya- 
cinth, and the rainbow of forest leaves being born, and 
the rainbow of forest leaves dying. 

And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It 
was bnt the three hundreth part of a grain, dissolved in 
a drop of water: and it cast its measured bars, for 
ever recognisable now to human sight, on the chord 
of the seven colours. And no drop of that red rain 
can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it can* 
not be known, and the voice of it heard out of the 
ground. 

But the seeing these flower colours, and the iris of 
blood together with them, just while I was trying to 
gather into brief space the right laws of war, brought 
vividly back to me my dreaming fancy of long ago, that 
even the trees of the earth were " capable of a kind of 
sorrow, as they opened their innocent leaves in vain for 
men; and along the dells of England her beeches cast 
their dappled shades only where the outlaw drew his 
bow, and the king rode his careless chase; amidst the 
fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid 
the ambushes of treachery, and on their meadows, day 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 179 

by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were 
washed with crimson at sunset." 

And so also now this chance word of the daily jour- 
nal, about the sirens, brought to my mind the div'ne 
passage in the Cratylus of Plato, about the place of the 
dead : — 

" And none of those who dwell there desire to depart 
thence, — no, not even the Sirens ; but even they, the se- 
ducers, are there themselves beguiled, and they who 
lulled all men, themselves laid to rest — they, and all 
others — such sweet songs doth death know how to sing 
to them." 

So also the Hebrew. 

" And desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long 
home." For you know I told you the Sirens were not 
pleasures, but desires ; being always represented in old 
Greek art as having human faces, with birds' wings and 
feet, and sometimes with eyes upon their wings ; and 
there are not two more important passages in all litera- 
ture, respecting the laws of labour and of life, than 
those two great descriptions of the Sirens in Homer and 
Plato, »~the Sirens of death, and Sirens of eternal life, 
representing severally the earthly and heavenly desires 
of men ; the heavenly desires singing to the motion of 
circles of the spheres, and the earthly on the rocks of 



180 TIME AND TIDE. 

fatallest shipwreck. A fact which may indeod be re 
garded " sentimentally," but it is also a profoundly im« 
portant politico-economical one. 

And now for Shakespeare's song. 

You will find if you look back to the analysis of it ; 
given in " Munera Pulveris," that the whole play of the 
Tempest is an allegorical representation of the powers of 
true, and therefore spiritual, Liberty, as opposed to true, 
and therefore carnal and brutal Slavery. There is not a 
sentence nor a rhyme, sung or uttered by Ariel or Cali- 
ban, throughout the play, which has not this undermean- 
ing. 

Now the fulfilment of all human liberty is in the 
peaceful inheritance of the earth, with its " herb yield- 
ing seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit " after his kind ; 
the pasture, or arable, land, and the blossoming, or 
wooded and fruited, land uniting the final elements of 
life and peace, for body and soul. Therefore, we have 
the two great Hebrew forms of benediction, " His eyes 
shall be red with wine, and his teeth w r hite with milk," 
and again, " Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may 
know to refuse the evil and choose the good." And as 
the work of war and sin has always been the devasta- 
tion of this blossoming earth, whether by spoil or idleness, 
so the work of peace and virtue is also that of the first 



LETTER XXTV.— THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 181 

day of Paradise, to "Dress it and to keep it." And 
that will always be the song of perfectly accomplished 
Liberty, in her industry, and rest, and shelter from 
troubled thoughts in the calm of the fields, and gaining, 
by migration, the long summer's clay from the shortening; 
twilight : — 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 

In a cowslip's bell I lie; 

There I couch when owls do cry. 

On the bat's back I do fly 

After summer merrily; 

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now 

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. 

And the security of this treasure to all the poor, and not 
the ravage of it down the valleys of the Shenandoah, is 
indeed the true warrior's work. But, that they may be 
able to restrain vice rightly, soldiers must themselves be 
first in virtue ; and that they may be able to compel 
labour sternly, they must themselves be first in toil, and 
their spears, like Jonathan's at Beth-aven, enlighteners 
of the eyes. 



Cctter 25. 

Of inevitable Distinction of Hank,, and necessary Submw 
sion to Authority. — The Meaning of Pure-Hearted 
ness. — Conclusion. 

I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going tc 
set my soldiers to work ; and to-day, here comes the 
pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about 
Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my 
concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at 
ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and 
you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas (carpenter), 
this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the 
general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, 
highly approves (the getting out of the unreasonable 
habit of paying respect to anybody). There were many 
reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes 
did not attend places of worship; one was, that "the 
parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the 
little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a 
bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no 
doubt wearing away to a great extent " (the base habit of 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 183 

making bows), " because, the poor man was beginning 
to get education, and to think for himself. It was only 
while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept 
ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the 
parson. ... It was the case all over England. The clergy- 
man seemed to think himself sqmething superior. Now 
he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority " 
(laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly 
in the right), " expect, perhaps, on the score of his having 
received a classical education, which the poor man could 
not get." 

Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the 
veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh ; this 
infidelity of the nineteenth-century St. Thomas in there 
being anything better than himself, alive ; coupled, as it 
always isr, with the farther resolution— if unwillingly con- 
vinced of the fact — to seal the Better living thing down 
again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had 
not intended, till we entered on the second section of our 
inquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having 
hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of 
justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about 
equalities produced by education ; but by this speech of 
our superior carpenter's, I am driven into it at once, and 
t is perhaps as well. 



184 TIME AND TIDE. 

The speecli is not, "observe, without its own roDt oi 
truth at the bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intend- 
ed by the speaker ; but you have in it a clear instance of 
what I was saying in the sixteenth of these letters, — that 
education was desired by the lower orders because they 
thought it would make them upper orders, and be a 
leveller and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily 
astonished, when they really get it, to find that it is, on 
the contrary, the fatallest of all discerners and enforcers 
of distinctions ; piercing, even to the division of the 
joints and marrow, to find out wherein your body and soul 
are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, and to 
sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal. 

Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely 
appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever 
is undivinely poor, it will make rich; whatever is undi- 
vinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, 
and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to 
it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, 
"hated of David's soul." But there are other divinely- 
appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the everlast- 
ing hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. 
And these, education does not do away with; but 
measures, manifests, and employs. 

In the handful of shingle which you gather from the 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 185 

sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of 
fraternal foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, 
you will see little difference between the noble and mean 
stones. But the jeweller's trenchant education c.f them 
will tell you another story. Even the meanest will be 
better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can 
class the two together no more. The fair veins and 
colours are all clear now, and so stern is Nature's 
intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show 
which is best, but the best will take the most polish. 
You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the 
others, but see that more of virtue more clearly ; and the 
less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what 
there is of it. 

And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to 
to vulgar pride, is this — that all its gains are at com- 
pound interest ; so that, as our work proceeds, every hour 
throws us farther behind the greater men with whom we 
began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand 
in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. 
Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the 
same page more. One is presently a page ahead, — two 
pages, ten pages, — and evermore, though each toils equ&Qy, 
the interval enlarges — at birth nothing, at death, infinite. 

And by this you may recognise true education from 



186 TIME AOT) TIDE. 

false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms 
you, and makes you every day think more of yourself 
And true education is a deadly cold thing, with a Gor- 
gon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think 
worse of yourself. 

Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is per- 
petually increasing the personal sense of ignorance and 
the personal sense of fault. And this last is the truth 
which is at the bottom of the common evangelical notions 
about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold of, 
and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing per- 
sonal ignorance and fault, as compared with the sense 
and virtue of others, people see nothing but corruption in 
human nature, and shelter their own sins under accusation 
of their race (the worst of all assertions of equality and 
fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and strength- 
ening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as 
compared with other men, by calling everybody else a fool 
too; and avoid the pain of discerning their own faults, 
by vociferously claiming their share in the great capital 
of original sin. 

I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly 
ought to have begun the next following section of our 
subject — the point usually unnoticed in the parable of 
the Prodigal Son. 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 187 

First, have you observed that all Christ's main teach 
ings, by direct order, by earnest parable, and by his own 
permanent emotion, regard the use and misuse of money ? 
We might have thought, if we had been asked what a 
divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he would 
have left inferior persons to give directions about money ; 
and himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and 
the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the crimes 
of soul against soul. But not so. He speaks in general 
terms of these. But he does not speak parables about 
them for all men's memory, nor permit himself fierce 
indignation against them, in all men's sight. The Phari- 
sees bring Him an adulteress. He writes her forgiveness 
on the dust of w T hich He had formed her. Another, de- 
spised of all for known sin, He recognized as a giver of 
unknown love. But he acknowledges no love in buyers 
and sellers in His house. One should have thought there 
were people in that house twenty times worse than they ; 
— Caiaphas and his like — false priests, false prayer- 
makers, false leaders of the people — who needed putting 
to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the 
scourge is only against the traffickers and thieves. The 
two most intense of all the parables : the two which lead 
the rest in love and in terror (this of the Prodigal, and of 
Dives) relate, both of them, to management of riches. 



188 TIME AND TIDE. 

The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, 
of whom it is recorded that Christ "loved him/' is briefly 
about his property. " Sell that thou hast." 

And the arbitrament of the day of Last Judgment is 
made to rest wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any 
spiritual virtue in man, nor on freedom from stress of 
stormy crime, but on this only, " I was an hungered and 
ye gave me drink ; naked, and ye clothed me ; sick, and 
ye came unto me." 

Well, then, the first thing I want you to notice in the 
parable of the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which 
people usually do notice in it), is — that it is about a 
Prodigal ! He begins by asking for his share of his 
father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and wastes it. 
It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are 
not asked to notice in what kind of riot : He spends it 
with harlots — but it is not the harlotry which his elder 
brother accuses him of mainly, but of having devoured 
his father's living. Nay, it is not the sensual life which 
he accuses himself of — or which the manner of his 
punishment accuses him of. But the wasteful life. It is 
not said that he had become debauched in soul, or 
diseased in body, by his vice ; but that at last he would 
tain have filled his belly with husks, and could not. It 
is not said that he was struck with remorse for the conse- 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 189 

quences of his evil passions, but only that he remembered 
there was bread enough and to spare, even for the 
servants, at home. 

Now, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sin& 
of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene 
is a light one compared to that of Judas) ; but observe, 
sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors 
and back-falls of noble souls ; but prodigality is mere and 
pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or 
undeveloped creature ; and I would rather, ten times 
rather, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of temptation 
and conditions of resistance being understood) he had 
fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all the mortal 
ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which 
he could not pay. 

Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most, 
accursed sins of the society of this present day are the 
carelessness with which it regards the betrayal of women, 
and brutality with which it suffers the neglect of chil- 
dren, both these head and chief crimes, and all others, are 
rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the duties, 
concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the 
parallel (and, observe, mathematically commensurate loose- 
ness in management of it), the " mal tener," followed nec- 
essarily by the " mal dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil 



190 miE AM) TIDE. 

Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the 
prodigal comes to his senses, lie complains of nobody but 
himself, and speaks of no unworthiness but his own. He 
says nothing against any of the women who tempted him 

— nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on 
husks- -nothing of the false friends of whom ;; no man 
gave unto him" — above all. nothing of the "corruption 
of human nature," or the corruption of things in general. 
He says that he himself is unworthy, as distinguished 
from honourable persons, and that he himself has sinned, 
as distinguished from righteous persons. And that is the 
hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful lessons. 
All right and fruitful humility, and purging of Heart, and 
seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the 
chief of sinners, expecting every sinner round you to 
decline — or return — the compliment ; but learn to 
measure the real degrees of your own relative baseness, 
and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's 
sight ; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the 
phrase, I have sinned "against heaven,"' against the great 
law of that, and before thee, visibly degraded before my 
human sire and guide, unworthy any more of being 
esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the 
place I deserve among his servants. 

Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a 



LE1TEK XXV. HYSSOP. 19 1 

readers teeth on edge by what he will think my carnal 
and material rendering of this " beautiful " parable. But 
I am just as ready to spiritualize it as he is, provided I 
am sure first that we understand it. If we want tc 
understand the parable of the sower, we must first 
think of it as of literal husbandry; if we want to 
understand the parable of the prodigal, we must first 
understand it as of literal prodigality. And the story 
has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of 
it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you 
throughout these letters, that all redemption must 
begin in subjection, and in the recovery of the sense of 
Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and desolation 
begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began 
by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns 
them. He is lost by flying from his father, when his 
father's authority was only paternal. He is found by 
returning to his father, and desiring that his authority 
may be absolute, as over a hired stranger. 

And this is the practical lesson I want to leave with 
you, and all other working men. r 

You are on the eve of a great political crisis ; and every 
rascal with a tongue in his head will try to make his own 
stock cut of you. Now this is the test you must try them 
with. Those that say to you, '' Stand up for your 



192 TIME AND TIDE. 

rights — get your division of living — be sure that you are 
as weL off as others, and have what they have ! — don't let 
any man dictate to you — have not you all a right to your 
opinion ? — are you not all as good as everybody else ? — lot 
us have no governors, or fathers — let us all be free and 
alike." Those, I say, who speak thus to you, take X el- 
son's rough order for — and hate them as vou do the 
Devil, for they are his ambassadors. But those, the few, 
who have the courage to say to you, "My friends, you 
and I, and all of us, have somehow got very wrong ; we've 
been hardly treated, certainly ; but here we are in a pig- 
gerry, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for 
ourselves, anything but respectable; we must get out of 
this: there are certainly laws we may learn to live by, and 
there are wiser people than we in the world, and kindly 
ones, if we can find our way to them ; and an infinitely 
wise and kind Father, above all of them and us, if we can 
but find our way to Him, and ask Him to take us for ser- 
vants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may 
never leave Him more.'* The people who will say that 
to you, and (for by no saying, but by their fruits, only, you 
shall finally know them) who are themselves orderly and 
kindly, and do their own business well, — take those for 
your guides, and trust them; on ice and rock alike, tie 
yourselves well together with them, and with much sera* 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 193 

tiny, and cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much lack 
as forward, at first), you will verily get off the glacier, 
and into meadow land, in God's time. 

I meant to have written much to you respecting the 
meaning of that word " hired servants, 55 and to have gone 
on to the duties of soldiers, for you know " Soldier " 
means a person who is paid to fight with regular pay — lit- 
erally with " soldi " or " sous " — the " penny a day " of the 
vineyard labourers : but I can't now : only just this much, 
that our whole system of work must be based on the 
nobleness of soldiership — so that we shall all be soldiers 
of either ploughshare or sword; and literally, all our 
actual and professed soldiers, whether professed for a time 
only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of hand, 
when not in actual war ; their honour consisting in being 
set to services of more pain and danger than others ; to 
lifeboat service; to redeeming of ground from furious 
rivers or sea — or mountain ruin ; to subduing wild and 
unhealthy land, and extending the confines of colonies in 
the front of miasm and famine, and savage races. 

And much of our harder home work must be done in a 
kind of soldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from 
place to place and town to town ; doing with strong and 
sudden hand what is needed for help, and setting all 
things in more prosperous courses for the future. 



194 T ™ 1E A ^ r# TTDBL 

Of all which I hope to speak in its proper place, after 
we know what offices the higher arts of gentleness have 
among the lower ones of force, and how their prevalence 
may gradually change spear to pruning-hook, over the 
face of all the earth. 

And now— hut one word more — either for you, or any 
other readers who may be startled at what 1 have been 
saying as to the peculiar stress laid by the Founder of our 
religion on right dealing with wealth. Let them be as- 
sured that it is with no fortuitous choice among the attri- 
butes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" is assigned for 
the direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound 
to serve. You cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, 
be God's soldier, and his. Nor while the desire of gain is 
within your heart, can any true knowledge of the King- 
dom of God come there. No one shall enter its strong- 
hold, — no one receive its blessing, except, "he that hath 
clean hands and a pure heart ; " clean hands, that have 
done no cruel deed ; — pure heart, that knows no base 
desire. And, therefore, in the highest spiritual sense that 
can be given to words, be assured, not respecting the lit- 
eral temple of stone and gold, but of the living temple of 
your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor 
hallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two 
verses have been, for it also, fulfilled : — 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 195 

"And He went into the temple, and oegan to cas 4 
uut them that sold therein, and them that bought. And 
He taught daily in the temple." 






APPENDICES 



APPENDIX 1. 
Page 18. — Expenditure on Science and Art. 

The following is the passage referred to. The fact it relates la c 
curious, and so illustrative of our national interest in science, th* I 
do not apologize for the repetition : — 

" Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhoten 
to be sold in Bavaria ; the best in existence, containing many speci- 
mens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species 
(a whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by 
that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, 
among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or 
twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven 
hundred : but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole 
series would have been in the Munich museum at this moment, if 
Professor Owen * had not, with loss of his own time, and patient 
tormenting of the British public in the person of its representatives, 
got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become 
answerable for the other three ! — which the said public will doubt- 
less pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the 
matter all the while ; only always ready to cackle if any credit oomei 
of it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. 
Your annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for mili- 

• I originally stated this fact without Professor Owen's permission; which, of course 
be could not with propriety *have granted had I asked it ; bnt I considered it so impor 
tant that the public should be aware of the fact, that I did what seemed to me right 
though rude. 



APPENDICES. 197 

tary apparatus) is at least fifty millions. Now seven hundred pounds 
is to fifty million pounds roughly, as seven pence to two thousand 
pounds. Suppose then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose 
wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent two thou - 
sand a year on his park walls and footmen only, professes himself 
fond of science ; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell 
him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clue to a new era of 
creation, is to be had for the sum of sevenpence sterling ; and that 
the gentleman, who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a 
year on his park, answers after keeping his servant waiting several 
months, ' Well ! I'll give you fourpence for them, if you will be an- 
swerable for the extra threepence yourself till next year ! ' " 



APPENDIX 2. 

Page 29. — Legislation of Frederick the Great 

The following are the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters referred to : — 
"Well, I am now busy with Frederick the Great; I am not now 
astonished that Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his 
should have had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I 
see the number of volumes he must have had to wade through to pro- 
duce such a clear terse set of utterances ; and yet I do not feel the 
work as a book likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his 
other books will do. It is truly awful to read these battles after 
battles, lies after lies, called Diplomacy ; it's fearful to read all this, and 
one wonders how he that set himself to this, — He, of all men, — could 
have the rare patience to produce such a laboured, heart-rending piece 
of work. Again, when one reads of the stupidity, the shameful waste 
of our monies by our forefathers, to see that our National Debt (the 
curse to our labour now, the millstone to our commerce, to our fair 
char.ce of competition in our day) thus created, and for what ? 
Even Carlyle cannot tell ; then how are we to tell ? Now, who will 
deliver us ? that is the question ; who will help us in those days oj 
idle or no work, while our foreign neighbours have plenty and are 



198 APPENDICES. 

actually selling their produce to our men of capital cheaper than we 
can make it ! House-rent getting dearer, taxes getting dearer, rates, 
clothing, food, &c. Sad times, my master, do seem to have fallen 
upon us. And the cause of nearly all this lies embedded in that 
Frederick ; and yet, so far as I know of it, no critic has yet given an 
exposition of such laying there. For our behoof, is there no one 
that will take this, that there lies so woven in with much other stuff 
so sad to read, to any man that does not believe man was made to 
fight alone, to be a butcher of his fellow man ? Who will do this 
work, or piece of work, so that all who care to know how it is that our 
debt grew so large, and a great deal more that we ought to know ? — 
that clearly is one great reason why the book was written and was 
printed. Well, I hope some day all this will be clear to our people, 
and some man or men will arise and sweep us clear of these hin- 
drances, these sad drawbacks to the vitality of our work in thi& 
world." 

"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 7, 1867. 
" Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of two letters as 
additions to your books, which I have read with deep interest, and 
shall take care of them, and read them over again, so that I may 
thoroughly comprehend them, and be able to think of them for future 
use. I myself am not fully satisfied with our co-operation, and never 
have been ; it is too much tinged with the very elements that they 
complain of in our present systems of trade — selfishness. I have for 
years been trying to direct the attention of the editor of the Co- 
operator to such evils that I see in it. Now, further, I may state that 
I find you and Carlyle seem to agree quite on the idea of the Master- 
hood qualification. There, again, I find you both feel and write as all 
working men consider just. I can assure you there is not an honest, 
noble, working man that would not by far serve under such master* 
hood, than be the employee or workman of a co-operative store, 
Working men do not as a rule make good masters ; neither do they 
treat each other with that courtesy as a noble master treats hii 
working man. George Fox shadows forth some such treatment that 
Friends ought to make law and guidance for their working men and 



APPENDICES. 199 

slaves, such as you speak of in your letters. I will look the passage 
up, as it is quite to the point, so far as I now remember it. In Vol. 
VI. of Frederick the Great, I find a great deal there that I feel quite 
certain, if our Queen or Government could make law, thousands of 
.English working men would hail it with such a shout of joy and glad- 
ness as would astonish the Continental world. These changes sug • 
gested by Carlyle, and placed before the thinkers of England, are the 
noblest, the truest utterances on real kinghood, that I have ever 
read; the more I think over them, the more I feel the truth, the 
justness, and also the fitness of them, to our nation's present dire 
necessities ; yet this is the man, and these are the thoughts of his, 
that our critics seem never to see, or if seen, don't think worth print- 
ing or in any way wisely directing the attention of the public thereto, 
alas! All this and much more fills me with such sadness that I am 
driven almost to despair. I see from the newspapers, Yorkshire, 
Lancashire, and other places are sternly endeavouring to carry out 
the short-time movement until such times as trade revives, and I find 
the masters and men seem to adopt it with a good grace and friendly 
spirit. I also beg to inform you I see a Mr. Morley, a large manu- 
facturer at Nottingham, has been giving pensions to all his old work- 
men. I hope such a noble example will be followed by other wealthy 
masters. It would do more to make a master loved, honoured, and 
cared for, than thousands of pounds expended in other ways. The 
Government Savings Bank is one of the wisest acts of late years done 
by our Government. I, myself, often wish the Government held all 
our banks instead of private men ; that would put an end to false 
speculations, such as we too often in the provinces suffer so severely 
by, so I hail with pleasure and delight the shadowing forth by you 
of these noble plans for the future : I feel glad and uplifted to think 
of the good tiat such teaching will do for us ail. 

"Yours truly, 

"Thomas Dixox " 

"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 24, 18«7. 
" Dear Sir, — I now give you the references to Frederick the Great^ 
Vol VL : Land Question, 365 page, where he increases the number 



200 APPENDICES. 

of small farmers to 4,000 (202, 204). English soldiers and. T. CVs re~ 

marks on our system of purchase, &c. His law (620, 623, 624), State 

of Poland and how he repaired it (487, 488, 489, 490). I especially 

value the way he introduced all kinds of industries therein, and so 

soon changed the chaos into order. Again, the schoolmasters also 

are given (not yet in England, says T. C). Again, the use he made 

of 15,000Z. surplus in Brandenburg ; how it was applied to better his 

staff of masters. To me, the Yol. YI. is one of the wisest pieces of 

modern thought in our language. I only wish I had either your 

power, C. Kingsley, Maurice, or some such able pen-generalship, to 

illustrate and show forth all the wise teaching on law, government, 

and social life I see in it, and shining like a star through all its pages. 

I feel also the truth of all you have written, and will do all I can to 

make such men or women that care for such thoughts, see it, or 

read it. I am copying the letters as fast and as well as I can, and 

will use my utmost endeavour to have them done that justice to they 

merit. 

" Yours truly, 

" Thomas Dixon." 



APPENDIX 3. 
Page 32. — Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth. 

The letter of the Times correspondent referred to contained an 
account of one of the most singular cases of depravity ever brought 
before a criminal court; but it is unnecessary to bring any of its 
details under the reader's attention, for nearly every other numbei 
of our journals has of late contained some instances of atrocities be- 
fore unthought of, and, it might have seemed, impossible to human- 
ity. The connection of these with the modern love of excitement in 
the sensation novel and drama may not be generally understood, 
but it is direct and constant ; all furious pursuit of pleasure ending in 
actual desire of horror and delight in death. I entered into some 



APPENDICES. 201 

fuller particulars on this subject in a lecture given in the spring at 
the Koyal Institution, which will be shortly published in a form 
accessible to the readers of these Letters, and I therefore give no ex- 
tracts from it. 



APPENDIX 4. 
Page 68. — Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime. 

The following portions of Mr. Dixon's letter referred to, will be 
found interesting: — 

" Dear Sir, — Your last letters I think will arouse the attention 
of thinkers more than any of the series, it being on topics they 
in general feel more interested in than the others, especially as in 
these you do not assail their pockets so much as in the former ones. 
Since you seem interested with the notes or rough sketches on gin, 
G- * * * of Dublin was the man I alluded to as making his money by 
drink, and then giving the results of such traffic to repair the 
Cathedral of Dublin. It was thousands of pounds. I call such 
charity robbing Peter to pay Paul ! Immense fortunes are made in 
the Liquor Traffic, and I will tell you why ; it is all paid for in cash, 
at least such as the poor people buy; they get credit for clothes, 
butchers' meat, groceries, &c, while they give the gin-palace keeper 
cash ; they never begrudge the price of a glass of gin or beer, they 
never haggle over its price, never once think of doing that ; but in 
the purchase of almost every other article they haggle and begrudge 
its price. To give you an idea of its profits — there are houses here 
whose average weekly takings in cash at their bars, is 50?., 607., 707., 
807., 907., to 1507. per week ! Nearly all the men of intelligence in it, 
say it is the curse of the working classes. Men whose earnings are, 
say 20s. to 30s. per week, spend on the average 3s. to 6s. per week 
(some even 10s.). It's my mode of living to supply these houses with 
corks, that makes me see so much of the drunkenness ; and that is 
the cause why I never really cared for my trade, seeing the misery 
that was entaifcd on my fellow men and women by the use of this 



202 APPENDICES. 

stuff. Again, a house with a licence to sell spirit, wine, and ale, to 
be consumed on the premises, is worth two to three times more 
money than any other class of property. One house here worth 
nominally 140Z. sold the other day for 520Z. ; another one worth 2001. 
sold for 8001. I know premises with a licence that were sold for 
1.300?., and then sold again two years after for 1,800?. ; another place 
was rented for 50Z. now rents at 100?. — this last is a house used by 
working men and labourers chiefly ! No, I honour men like Sir W. 
Trevelyn, that are teetotallers, or total abstainers, as an example to 
poor men, and to prevent his work people being tempted, will not 
allow any public-house on his estate. If our land had a few such 
men it would help the cause. We possess one such a man here, a 
banker. I feel sorry to say the progress of temperance is not so great as 
I would like to see it. The only religious body that approaches to your 
ideas of political economy is Quakerism as taught by G-eorge Fox. Car- 
lyle seems deeply tinged with their teachings. Silence to them is as valu- 
able as to him. Again, why should people howl and shriek over the law 
that the Alliance is now trying to carry out in our land, called the 
Permissive Bill ? If we had just laws we then would not be so mis- 
erable or so much annoyed now and then with cries of Reform and 
cries of Distress. I send you two pamphlets ; — one gives the work- 
ing man's reasons why he don't go to church ; in it you will see a 
few opinions expressed very much akin to those you have written to 
me. The other gives an account how it is the poor Indians have 
died of Famine, simply because they have destroyed the very system 
of Political Economy, or one having some approach to it, that you 
are now endeavouring to direct the attention of thinkers to in our 
country. The Sesame and Lilies I have read as you requested. I 
feel now fully the aim and object you have in view in the Letters, 
but I cannot help directing your attention to that portion where you 
mention or rather exclaim against the Florentines pulling down their 
Ancient Walls to build a Boulevard. That passage is one that would 
gladden the hearts of all true Italians,- especially men that love Itah 
and Dante I 

• 



APPENDICES. 203 

APPENDIX 5. 

Page 69. — Abuse of Food. 

Paragraphs cat from Manchester Examiner of March li, ±867: — 
u A Parisian Character. — A celebrated character has disappeared 
from the Palais Royal. Rene Lartique was a Swiss, and a man ol 
about sixty. He actually spent the last fifteen years in the Palais 
Royal — that is to say, he spent the third of his life at dinner. Every 
morning at ten o'clock he was to be seen going into a restaurant 
(usually Tissat's), and in a few moments was installed in a corner, 
which he only quitted about three o'clock in the afternoon, after hav- 
ing drunk at least six or seven bottles of different kinds of wine. He 
then walked up and down the garden till the clock struck five, when 
he made his appearance again at the same restaurant, and always at 
the same place. His second meal, at which he drank quite as much 
as at the first, invariably lasted till half-past nine. Therefore, he 
devoted nine hours a day to eating and drinking. His dress was 
most wretched — his shoes broken, his trousers torn, his paletot with- 
out any lining, and patched, his waistcoat without buttons, his hat a 
rusty red from old age, and the whole surmounted by a dirty white 
beard. One clay he went up to the comptoir, and asked the presiding 
divinity there to allow him to run in debt for one day's dinner. He 
perceived some hesitation in complying with the request, and imme- 
diately called one of the waiters, and desired him to follow him. He 
went into the office, unbuttoned a certain indispensable garment, and, 
taking off a broad leather belt, somewhat startled the waiter by dis- 
playing two hundred gold pieces, each worth one hundred francs. 
Taking up one of them, he tossed it to the waiter, and desired him to 
pay whatever he owed. He never again appeared at that restaurant, 
and died a few days ago of indigestion." 

"Revenge in a B all-Room. — A distressing event lately took 
place at Castellaz, a little commune of the Alpes-Maritimes, near 
Mentone. All the young people of the place being assembled in a 



204 APPENDICES. 

dancing-room, one of the young men was seen to fall suddenly to tin 
ground, whilst a young woman, his partner, brandished a poniard, 
and was preparing to inflict a second blow on him, having already 
desperately wounded him in the stomach. The author of the crime 

was at once arrested. She declared her name to be Maria P f 

twenty-one years of age, and added that she had acted from a motive 
of revenge, the young man having led her astray formerly with a 
promise of marriage, which he had never fulfilled. In the morning 
of that day she had summoned him to keep his word, and, upon his 
refusal, had determined on making the dancing-room the scene of her 
revenge. She was at first locked up in the prison of Mentone, and 
afterwards sent on to Nice. The young man continues in an alarm- 
ing state." 

APPENDIX 6. 
Page 74. — Law of Property. 

The following is the paragraph referred to : — 

11 The first necessity of all economical government is to secure the 
unquestioned and unquestionable working of the great law of prop- 
erty — that a man who works for a thing shall be allowed to get it, 
keep it, and consume it, in peace ; and that he who does not eat his 
cake to-day, shall be seen, without grudging, to have his cake to- 
morrow. This, I say, is the first point to be secured by social law ; 
without this, no political advance, nay, no political existence, is in 
any sort possible. Whatever evil, luxury, iniquity, may seem to 
result from it^ this is nevertheless the first of all equities : and to the 
enforcement of this, by law and by police-truncheon, the nation 
must always primarily set its mind — that the cupboard-door may 
nave a firm lock to it, and no man's dinner be carriet eff by the mob, 
on its way home from the baker's." 



APPENDICES. 20E 

i 
APPENDIX 7. 

Page 79. — Ambition of Bishops. 

u Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desir 
ing power more than light. They want authority, not outlook. 
Whereas their real office is not to rule, though it may be vigorously 
to exhort and rebuke ; it is the king's office to rule ; the bishop'a 
office is to oversee the flock, to number it, sheep by sheep, to be 
ready always to give full account of it. Now it is clear he cannot 
give account of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the 
bodies, of his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to 
do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any moment, 
he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every living soul in hi a 
diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back street, Bill and 
Nancy knocking each other's teeth out ! — Does the bishop know all 
about it ? Has he had his eye upon them ? Can he circumstantially 
explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the 
head ? If he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high 
as Salisbury steeple ; he is no bishop — he has sought to be at the 
helm instead of the mast-head ; he has no sight of things. ' Nay,' 
you say, i it is not his duty to look after Bill in the " back street." ' 
What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is only those 
he should look after, while (go back to your Milton) i the hungry 
sheep look up, and are not fed/ besides what the grim wolf, ' with 
privy paw ' (bishops knowing nothing about it) ' daily devours apace, 
and nothing said ? * ' But that's not our idea of a bishop/ Perhaps 
not ; but it was St. Paul's, and it was Milton's. They may be right, 
or we may be ; but we must not think we are reading either one or 
the other by putting our meaning into their words." — Sesame and 
Lilies, p. 45. 



206 APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX 8. 

Page 84. — Regulations of Trade, 

I print portions of two letters of Mr. Dixon's in this place one 
referring to our former discussion respecting the sale of votes. 

"57, Kile Street, Sunderland, March 21, 1SGT. 

11 1 only wish I could write in some tolerable good style, so that I 
could idealize, or rather realize to folks, the life, and love, and mar- 
riage of a working man and his wife. It is in my opinion a working 
man that really does know what a true wife is, for his every want, his 
every comfort in life depends on her; and his children's home, their 
daily lives and future lives, are shaped by her. Napoleon wisely said, 
1 France needs good mothers more than brave men. G-ood mothers 
are the makers or shapers of good and brave men.' I cannot say that 
these are the words, but it is the import of his speech on the topic 
We have a saying amongst us : ■ The man may spend and money lend, 
if his wife be ought,' — i. c, good wife ; — ' but he may work and try to 
save, but will have nought, if his wife be nought,' — L e., bad or thrift- 
less wife. 

"Now, since you are intending to treat of the working man's par- 
liament and its duties, I will just throw out a few suggestions of what 
I consider* should be the questions or measures that demand an early 
inquiry into and debate on. That guilds be established in every town, 
where masters and men may meet, so as to avoid the temptations of 
the public-house and drink. And then, let it be made law that every 
lad should serve an apprenticeship of not less than seven years to a 
trade or art, before he is allowed to be a member of such guild; also, 
that all wages be based on. a rate of so much per h our, and not day, as 
at present ; and let every man prove his workmanship before such 
a guild ; and then allow to him such payment per hour as his craft 
merits. Let there be three grades, and then let there be trials of skiL 
in workmanship every year; and then, if the workman of the third 
grade prove that he has made progress in his craft, r€ ward him accord- 



APPENDICES. 207 

ingly. Then, before a lad is put to any tiade, why not see what he is 
naturally fitted for? Combe's book, entitled The Constitution of Man, 
throws a good deal of truth on to these matters. Now, here are twc 
branches of the science of life that, so far, have never once been given 
trial of in this way. We certainly use them after a crime has been 
committed, but not till then. 

" Next to that, cash payment for all and everything needed in life. 
Credit is a curse to him that gives it, and he that takes it. He that 
lives by credit lives in general carelessly. If there was no credit, 
people then would have to live on what they earned ! Then, after 
that, the Statute of Limitations of Fortune you propose. By the 
hour system, not a single man need be idle ; it would give employment 
to all, and even two hours per day would realize more to a man than 
breaking stones. Thus you would make every one self-dependent — 
also no fear of being out of work altogether. Then let there be a 
Government fund for all the savings of the working man. I am afraid 
you will think this a wild, discursive sort of a letter. 

" Yours truly, 

"Thomas Dixon.' ' 

" I have read your references to the Times on * Bribery.' Well, that 
has long been my own opinion ; they simply have a vote to sell, and 
sell it the same way as they sell potatoes, or a coat, or any other sale- 
able article. Yoters generally say, ' What does this gentleman want in 
Parliament ? Why, to help himself and his family or friends ; he does 
not spend all the money he spends over his election for pure good of 
his country! No: it's to benefit his pocket, to be sure.' 'Why 
should I not make a penny with my vote, as well as he does with his 
in Parliament ? ' I think that if the system of canvassing or election 
agents were done away with, and all personal canvassing for votes 
entirely abolished, it would help to put down bribery. Let each 
gentleman send to the electors his political opinions in a circular, and 
men let papers be sent, or cards, to each elector, and then let them 
jo and record their votes in the same way they do for a councillor in 
he Corporation. It would save a great deal of exp m*e, and prevent 



208 APPENDICES. 

those scenes of drunkenness so common in our towns i uring elections 
Bewick's opinions of these matters are quite to the purpose, I think 
{seepage201 of Memoir). Again, respecting the Paris matter referred 
to in your last letter, I have read it. Does it not manifest plainly 
enough that Europeans are also in a measure possessed with that 
same demoniacal spirit like the Japanese?" 



APPENDIX 9. 

Page 144. — Greatness Coal-begotten. 

44 Here is a bit of paper in my hand,* a good one too, and an 
honest one ; quite representative of the best common public thought 
of England at this moment ; and it is holding forth in one of its lead- 
ers upon our ' social welfare,' — upon our ' vivid life,'- — upon the 

* political supremacy of Great Britain.' And what do you think all 
these are owing to ? To what our English sires have done for us, 
and taught us, age after age ? No : not to that. To our honesty of 
heart, or coolness of head, or steadiness of will ? No : not to these. 
To our thinkers, or our statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or 
our martyrs, or the patient labour of our poor ? No : not to these ; 
or at least not to these in any chief measure. Nay, says the journal, 

* more than any agency, it is the cheapness and abundance of our 
coal which have made us what we are.' If it be so, then ' ashes to 
ashes ' be our epitaph ! and the sooner the better. I tell you, gen- 
tlemen of England, if ever you would have your country breathe the 
pure breath of heaven again, and receive again a soul into her body, 

* A saying of Baron Liebig's, quoted at the head of a leader on the same subject in the 
Daily Telegraph of January 11, 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly 
of modern thought in this respect. " Civilization,*' says the Baron, M is the economy of 
power, and English power is coal." Not altogether so, my chemical friend. Civilization 
Is the making of civil persons, which is a kind of distillation of which alembics are in- 
capable, and does not at all imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a 
large company of ironmongers. And English power (what little of it may be left) is by 
no means coal, but in leed, of that which, " when the whole world turns tc coal, then 
chiefly lives." 



APPENDICES. 209 

instead of rotting into a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic 
acid (and great that way), you must think, and feel, for your Eng- 
land, as well as fight for her : you must teach her that all the true 
greatness she ever had, or ever can have, she won while her fields 
were green and her faces ruddy ; — that greatness is still possible for 
Englishmen, even though the ground be not hollow under their feet 
nor the sky black over their heads." — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 200. 



APPENDIX 10. 

The following letter did not form part of the series written to Mr. 
Dixon ; but is perhaps worth reprinting. I have not the date of 
the number of the Gazette in which it appeared, but it was during the 
tailors' strike in London. 

"To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette: 

" Sir, — In your yesterday's article on strikes you have very neatly 
and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy 
— to wit, that l the value of any piece of labour cannot be defined ' — 
and that 'all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can 
be got to do it for a certain sum.' Now, sir, the l value ' of any piece 
of labour, that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will 
enable a man to perform it without losing actually any of his flesh or 
his nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight 
of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And 
within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circum- 
stances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five 
years ago — and under pardon of your politico-economical contributors 
—it is not a 'sentimental,' but a chemical, fact. 

" Let any half-dozen of recognized Loudon physicians state in pre- 
cise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they 
consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a labourer in 
any given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without 
shortening his life, work at such business daily if so sustained. 



210 APPENDICES. 

"And let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between 
an order for that quantity of food and lodging, or such wages as the 
market may offer for that number of hours* work. 

" Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further 
concession — but, in the outset, let but this law of wages be estab- 
lished, and if then we have any more strikes you may denounce then? 
mthout one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility. 

" I am, Sir, 

" Your faithful servant, 

"JOHN RCSKIW.' 



New York, February, 1886. 



JOHN WILEY & SONS, 

15 ASTOR PLA6E, NEW YORK, 

OFFER 

The Separate Works of Jotjn Ruskin 

AT THE FOLLOWING 

GREATLY REDUCED PRICES. 
WITH AND WITHOUT PLATES. (AU the Plates are printed separately.) 



Ruskin's An Inquiry into Some of the Conditions Affecting 

" The Study of Architecture " in our Schools. .12mo, paper, $0 10 

Aratra Pentelici. Six Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture, 

given before the University of Oxford, with cuts, 12mo, russet cloth, 50 
DITTO. 21 plates (2 colored), printed separately. .12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

Ariadne Florentina. Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engrav- 

ing, given before the University of Oxford. 12mo, cloth. Complete 

with Appendix , 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

DITTO. With 12 plates, printed separately 12mo, russet cloth, 75 

Arrows of the Chace. A Collection of Letters from 1840 to 1880. 

Edited by an Oxford Pupil. 2 vols, bound in one. Plate. .12mo, cloth, 1 00 

Art Culture. A Hand-Book of Art Technicalities and Criticisms, 

selected from the Works of John Ruskin, and arranged and supple- 
mented by Rev. W. H. Piatt, for the use of the Intelligent Traveler 
and Art Student, with a new Glossary of Art Terms and an Alpha- 
betical and Chronological List of Artists. With illustrations. 

12mo, russet cloth, 1 50 

" Mr. Piatt has worked out an idea so striking for its attractiveness and Utility 
that, perceiving it, wc at once go to work wondering that somebody else had not 
executed it before him. He has gone over the vast and superb areas of John 
Ruskin's Writings, and cutting out one block here and another there, as it suited 
his purpose, has put all these parts together again into a literary mosaic, constitu- 
ting a clear and harmonious system of art principles, wherein Ruskin all the while 
is the teacher. He has reduced Ruskin to a code. On the whole, we see not what 
this book lacks of being a complete text-book of the Gospel of Art according to 
St. John Ruskin. 11 — Christian Union. 



II. 

Ruskin John. Works of— Continued. 

Art of England. Lectures given in Oxford during the second 

tenure of the Slade Professorship. Complete. . ..12mo, russet cloth, $0 50 
Art of England. With new Portrait of Author. 12nio, cloth extra, 75 

Art of England. Lectures I. and II., III. and IV. Boards, each, 25 

Art of England. Lectures V. and VI 12mo, boards, 25 

Bibliography of Ruskin. A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST, 

arranged in chronological order, of the published writings in Prose 
and Verse of John Ruskin, from 1S34 to the present time, 
(October 1878.). . . 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Birthday Book. A Selection of Thoughts, Mottoes and Aphor- 

isms for Every Day in the Year, from the Works of John Ruskin, 
LL.D. Collected and arranged by M. A. B. and G. A. Witlra new 
and fine portrait of Mr. Ruskin. Square 12mo, cloth, extra beveled 
boards, gilt edges 1 50 

Crown of Wild Olive, The. Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, 

and War 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Deucalion. Collected Studies on the Lapse of Waves and Life of 

Stones. Parts 1 and 2 12mo, russet cloth, K ^ 

Parts 3 and 4. Plates 12mo, russet cloth, \ 

Parts 5, 6 and 7. Plates 12mo, russet cloth, 75 

Eagle's Nest, The. Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural 

Science to Art, before the University of Oxford. .12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Elements of Drawing, The. In Three Letters to Beginners. 

With illustrations, drawn by the author 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Elements of Perspective, The. Arranged for the use of 

Schools 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Ethics of the Dust, The. Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on 

the Elements of Crystallization 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Fors Clavigera. Letters to Workmen. 

Vols. 1 and 2. — 2 vols, in one. Plates. .12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

Vols. 3 and 4. — 2 vols, in one. Plates. .12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

Vols. 5 and 6. — 2 vols, in one. Plates. ,12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

Vols. 7 and 8. — 2 vols, in one. Plates. .12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

DITTO. 8 vols, in three without plates. 12mo, russet cloth, 3 00 

Frondes Agrestes. Readings on " Modern Painters. " Chosen at 

her pleasure by the author's friend, the Younger Lady of the 
Thwaite, Coniston 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

King of the Golden River, The. Or, the Black Brothers. 

A Legend of Stiria. A Fairy Tale .12mo, cloth extra, 50 

Laws of Fesole, The. A Familiar Treatise on the Elementary 

Principles and Practice of Drawing and Painting as determined by 
the Tuscan Masters, with numerous plates. Arranged for the use 

of Schools 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

DITTO, ditto. With 12 plates 12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

Lectures on Architecture and Painting-. Delivered at 

Edinburgh 12mo, russet cloth, ^0 50 

DITTO. 15 plates, full-page, printed separately 12mo, russet cloth, 75 

Lectures on Art. Delivered before the University of Oxford in 

Hilary Term 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

A • 



III. 

Ruskin, John. Works of— Continued. 

Letters and Advice to Young Girls and Young Ladies 

on Dress, Education, Marriage, Sphere, Influence, 
Women's Work, Women's Rights, Etc. 12mo, extra gilt, cloth, $0 50 

Love's Meine. Lectures on Greek and English Birds, given before 

the University of Oxford 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

- — Miscellanies. — Containing : 

Michael Angelo and Tintoret.- — Pictures of Royal Academy — Inau- 
gural Address, opening of Crystal Palace. — Drawings of Turner. 
— Pictures in Academy of Venice, Etc 12mo, russet cloth, 1 25 

Modern Painters. 

Vol. 1 .—Part 1. General Principles. Part 2. Truth. 

Vol. 2.— Part 3. Of Ideas of Beauty. 

Vol. 3.— Part 4. Of Many Things. 

Vol. 4.— Part 5. Of Mountain Beauty. 

Vol. 5.— Part 6. Leaf Beauty. Part 7. Of Cloud Beauty. 

Part 8. Ideas of Relation of Invention, Formal. Part 9. 

Ideas of Relation of Invention, Spiritual. 

VV'oodcuts, 5 vols, bound in 3 vols 12mo, russet cloth, 

Plates and Woodcuts. 5 vols, bound in four. . russet cloth, 

DITTO, Plates and Woodcuts, in box, 5 vols 12mo, ex. cloth, 

DITTO, ditto, ditto 5 vols. , 12mo, half calf, 

Modern Painters. People's edition. 5 vols, in two cloth, 

Modern Painters. Extra Volume. Being the reissue of 

Volume II. of this work. Revised and rearranged with critical notes 

by the author 12mo. russet cloth, 

DITTO 12mo, extra cloth, 

DITTO 12mo, green cloth, 

Mornings in Florence. Studies on Christian Art for English 

Travelers. Santa Croce — The Golden Gate — Before the Soldan — The 
Vaulted Roof— The Strait Gate— The Shepherd's Tower. 

12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Munera Pulveris. Six Essays on the Elements of Political 

Economy .12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds ; Or, Visible 

Churches. 

Our Fathers Have Told Us. Plates 12mo, russet cloth, 75 

Pearls for Young 1 Ladies. From the later woiks of John 

Ruskin. Selected by Louisa C. Tuthill . . . r 12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

DITTO, ditto Extra gilt, cloth, 1 25 

Poems. The Old Water Wheel and other Poems. By 

John Ruskin. Collected and edited from their original "Annual" 

publication, 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

DITTO, ditto, with an etched frontispiece Extra gilt, cloth, 1 25 

Poetry of Architecture, The. Cottage, Villa, etc., to which is 

added Suggestions on Works of Art. With numerous illustrations. 

By Kata Phusin. (Nom de plume of John Ruskin) 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Political Economy of Art, The. Being the substance of two 

Lectures (with additions) delivered at Manchester. 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Precious Thoughts : Moral and Religious. Gathered from the 

Works of John Ruskin. By Mrs. L. C. Tuthill. 12mo, russet cloth. 1 00 
DITTO, ditto Extra o-ilt. cloth. 1 25 



3 50 


6 00 


10 00 


17 00 


2 00 


50 


75 


50 



• IV, 

Ruskin, John. Works of— Continued. 

Pre-Raphaelitism 12mo, russet cloth, $0 50 

Proserpina. Studies of Wayside Flowers, while the air was yet 

pure, among the Alps and in the Scotland and England which my 
father knew 

Parts 1 and 2 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Parts 3 and 4, illustrations 12nio, russet cloth, 63 

Parts 5 and 6, illustrations 12mo, russet cloth, 63 

Parts?, 8 and 9 75 

"V olume I. (containing parts 1 to 6) .12mo, russet cloth, 1 25 

Queen of the Air, The. Being a Study of the Greek Myths of 

Cloud and Storm 12n±o, russet cloth, 50 

St. Mark's Rest. The History of Venice. Written for the 

help of the Few Travelers who still care for her Monuments. Parts 

I., II. and III., with two Supplements 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Selections from Writings of John Ruskin. 12mo, russet cloth, 75 

DITTO, ditto .12mo, extra cloth, 1 00 

Sesame and Lilies. Three Lectures (on Books, Women, etc). 

1. Of Kings' Treasuries. 2. Of Queens' Gardens. 3. Of the 

Mystery of Life 12mo, cloth, 

New edition 12mo, thick paper, russet cloth, 

New edition 12rno, thick paper, ex. cloth, 

Seven Lamps of Architecture. With copies of illustrations 

drawn bv the author. Plates 12mo, ex. cloth, 

DITTO "" " " 12mo, russet cloth, 

DITTO. Cheap edition, without plates 12mo, cloth, 

Stones of Venice. Vol. 1. Foundations. 

Vol.2. Sea Stories. Vol.3. The Fall. 8 vols, in two. 12mo, russet cloth, 

DITTO , Plates. 3 vols., 12mo, russet cloth, 

Plates. Box, 3 vols., 12mo, ex. cloth, 

DITTO Plates. 3 vols., 12mo., half calf, 7 50 

DITTO, People's Edition. 3 vols, in one 1 25 

Storm Cloud of the 19th Century. By John Ruskin. 12mo, cloth, 50 

The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and 

Religion. Selected from the Works of John Ruskin, A M. With 

a notice of the author, by Mrs. L. C. Tuthill. 12mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

DITTO, ditto, with Portrait 12mo, extra cloth, 1 25 

The Two Paths. Being Lectures on Art, and its Application to 

Decoration and Manufacture. Steel plates and cuts. 12mo, russet cloth, 75 
DITTO, without plates 50 

Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne. Twenty-five Letters to a 

Workingman of Sunderland on the Laws of Work. 12mo, russet cloth, 50 
" Unto This Last." Four Essays on the First Principles of 

Political Economy 12mo, russet cloth, 50 

Val D'Arno. 13 Plates 1 2mo, russet cloth, 1 00 

Ruskin's Works. Uniformly bound in 12 volumes. Elegant style. 

223 full-page plates, colored and plain, on plate paper. 

12mo, extra cloth, 18 00 

DITTO, ditto, with all the plates 12mo, half calf, 36 00 

DITTO I without plates). 12 vols 12mo, extra cloth. 12 00 



50 

75 

1 00 


1 25 

75 
50 


1 50 

3 00 

4 50 



